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Animality and Affect: Beckett and Derrida

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2020, 33(1), pp.233-262
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama
  • Received : March 16, 2020
  • Accepted : April 14, 2020
  • Published : April 30, 2020

Choi, Sunghee 1

1부산대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

To examine the attitude of Beckett toward animals is to clarify the hidden qualities of his works by distinguishing what manner he had among many possible branches through which various philosophies and theories have taken for their thinking of the animal. To do this, we are going to apply the notion of ‘affect’ in the analysis of animality revealed in Beckett’s works. The first reason to refer to it is that animality and affect appear as two major axes in two leading philosophers’ discussion of animals in the 20th century, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. Even though they show contrasting thoughts about the animal, the two philosophers are interestingly developing arguments for animals through different affects, ‘boredom’ and ‘shame,’ respectively. The second reason is that I agree with Derrida’s observation that affect is an important occasion for creating a rift in an old, therefore hard-to-change dichotomy between humans and nonhuman animals.

Citation status

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.