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  1. bookVolume 21 (2021): Issue 1 (June 2021)
East-West Cultural Passage's Cover Image
East-West Cultural Passage
Journal Details
License
Format
Journal
eISSN
2067-5712
First Published
30 Aug 2019
Publication timeframe
2 times per year
Languages
English
access type Open Access

Affective Refuge in the Work of Samuel Beckett

Andrei-Bogdan Popa
Andrei-Bogdan Popa
Published Online: 21 Jan 2022
Volume & Issue: Volume 21 (2021) - Issue 1 (June 2021)
Page range: 110 - 128
East-West Cultural Passage's Cover Image
East-West Cultural Passage
Journal Details
License
Format
Journal
eISSN
2067-5712
First Published
30 Aug 2019
Publication timeframe
2 times per year
Languages
English
Abstract

Drawing upon Sara Ahmed's “cultural politics of emotion” and Claire Colebrook's conceptualization of “Cartesian affect,” this article puts forward the notion of affective refuge, a phenomenon which is investigated through an analysis of Samuel Beckett's Watt, Krapp's Last Tape and Ohio Impromptu. First, I highlight the opposing perspectives as well the potential common ground between Ahmed's and Claire Colebrook's theories in order to argue that the thought of affective refuge might actually be defined as the movement away from seeing affect as that which “make[s] us aware of [our] bodily dwelling” (Ahmed 26) and towards recognizing “the Cartesian moment of … never being proximate to one's own body,” as understood by Colebrook in her 2020 essay “Cartesian Affect” (442). I then go on to claim that, in Watt, affective refuge emerges as a reaction to fear, as the protagonist strives to process the surfaces of things and bodies around him via elaborate systems of perception, while in Krapp's Last Tape and Ohio Impromptu, the pain of remorse the characters experience regarding their own grieving practices comes to shatter the remainder of the affective refuge which had unfolded in their relationships to their departed loved ones.

Keywords

  • affect theory
  • mobility
  • refuge
  • corporality
  • spatiality
  • Cartesian affect
  • Deleuze studies
  • Beckett studies

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