Samuel Beckett and the prosthetic body : the organs and senses in modernism / Yoshiki Tajiri.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tajiri, Yoshiki, 1964-

Contributor:

Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989--Criticism and interpretation.

Beckett, Samuel.

Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989.

Human body in literature.

Senses and sensation in literature.

Technology in literature.

Literature and technology.

Modernism (Literature)--Great Britain.

Modernism (Literature).

Criticism and interpretation.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

ix, 200 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Summary:

Samuel Beckett and the Prosthetic Body is a study of the representation of the body in Samuel Beckett's work (both novels and plays), specifically focusing on the 'prosthetic' aspects of the organs and senses. Referring to the indeterminate border between the body and material objects, inside and outside, self and other, the concept of prosthesis is gaining weight in contemporary critical discourses. While making use of the theoretical potential of this concept, Tajiri attempts to highlight palpably physical aspects of the Beckettian body. In the process Beckett's work is newly situated in the broad cultural context of modernism in which the impact of new media and technologies was profoundly registered. As a whole, a comprehensive perspective is given on such diverse topics as the mechanization of the body, the foregrounding of the bodily boundaries and orifices, synaesthesia, the camera eye and the mechanically reproduced voice.

Contents:

1 The Prosthetic Body and Sexuality 13

The masturbation machine in Dream of Fair to Middling Women 13

Beckett and the bachelor machine 19

The attempt to dam up flows 24

The machine and sexuality in Beckett's later work 30

2 The Question of Boundaries 40

The body parts as prostheses 41

Confusion of the organs 47

The instability of the body's surface 54

A critique of Deleuze and Guattari's discussions of Beckett 63

3 The Prosthetic Body and Synaesthesia 75

Fragmentation of the body and synaesthesia 76

Technology and the transformation of the senses: three theories 83

Synaesthesia in Beckett's early work 91

Synaesthesia in Beckett's later work 101

4 The Camera Eye 109

Beckett and the cinema 110

The camera eye/the naked eye 116

The double and self-reflexivity 122

Ill Seen Ill Said 133

5 The Prosthetic Voice 138

Beckett, Derrida, telecommunication 140

Communication over distance: The Unnamable and How It Is 145

The prosthetic voice and the ghostly 151

The interpenetration between the material and the immaterial 156.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-196) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

0230008178

9780230008175

OCLC:

70054344