“Abiding there unliving” death and bare life in the unnamable

Carville, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3369-0522 (2024) “Abiding there unliving” death and bare life in the unnamable. Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui, 36 (2). pp. 219-232. ISSN 1875-7405 doi: 10.1163/18757405-03602005

Abstract/Summary

Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer proposes that the public display of power over life and death that Foucault restricts to the 18th century were not displaced by the new disciplinary structures associated with the hospital and the asylum, but remained contemporary with them. This notion of the simultaneity of surveillance and spectacle can be helpful in thinking about Beckett’s novel The Unnamable. Agamben’s work can also demonstrate the centrality of the character of Worm. In this way the broader notion of biopolitics can usefully illuminate the historical and political contexts of the book.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/116102
Identification Number/DOI	10.1163/18757405-03602005
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Samuel Beckett Research Centre Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > English Literature
Publisher	Brill
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item