Description
CAMBRIDGE Beckett and Poststructuralism 2009 Edition by Anthony Uhlmann
In Beckett and Poststructuralism, Anthony Uhlmann offers a reading of Beckett in relation to French philosophy, particularly the work of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Levinas, and Derrida. Uhlmann offers a work of literary criticism that is also a piece of intellectual history, emphasizing how Beckett develops a kind of critical thinking which differs from yet is just as powerful as that of philosophers who, along with Beckett, found themselves faced with sets of ethical problems which were thrown into sharp relief in post-war France. Uhlmann explores the links between ethics and physical existence in Beckett, Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari, and between ethics and language in Beckett, Derrida and Levinas, showing how post-war French philosophy was powerfully affected by Beckett's work. Literature is not reduced to philosophy or vice versa; rather Uhlmann considers how they interrelate and overlap, informing and deforming one another, and how both encounter history. Table of contents :- Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Molloy, surveillance and secrets: Beckett and Foucault; 2. Perception and apprehension: Bergson, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari and Beckett; 3. Crisis with the moral order in post World War Two France; 4. Towards an ethics: Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari and Beckett; 5. Voices and stories: the translator and the leader; 6. Language, between violence and justice: Beckett, Levinas and Derrida; Conclusion; List of references; Index.