The Affects Cognition and Politics of Samuel Beckett's Postwar Drama and Fiction

<p><i>The Affects, Cognition, and Politics of Samuel Beckett's Postwar Drama and Fiction: Revolutionary and Evolutionary Paradoxes </i>theorizes the revolutionary and evolutionary import of Beckett's works in a global context defined by increasingly ubiquitous and insidious mechanisms of capture, exploitation, and repression, alongside unprecedented demands for high-volume information-processing and connectivity. Part I shows that, in generating consistent flows of solidarity-based angry laughter, Beckett's works sabotage coercive couplings of the subject to social machines by translating subordination and repression into <i>processes </i>rather than <i>data</i> of experience. Through an examination of Beckett's attack on gender/ class-related normative injunctions, the book shows that Beckett's works can generate solidarity and action-oriented affects in readers/ spectators regardless of their training in textual analysis. Part II proposes that Beckett's works can weaken the cognitive dominance of constrictive "frames" in readers/ audiences, so that toxic ideological formations such as the association of safety and comfort with simplicity and "sameness" are rejected and more complex cognitive operations are welcomed instead-a process that bolsters the mind's ability to operate at ease with increasingly complex, malleable, extensible, and inclusive frames, as well as with increasing volumes of information.</p>