The ethico-politics of homo-ness: Beckett's How It Is and Casement's Black Diaries |
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Authors: | Patrick Bixby |
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Institution: | 1. The New College of Interdisciplinary Arts &2. Sciences, Arizona State University , 4701 W. Thunderbird Rd, Glendale , AZ , 85306 , USA |
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Abstract: | In recent years, Beckett studies has taken an ‘ethical turn’ as critics have given increased attention to the status of the Other and otherness in the writer's oeuvre. How It Is, a key text for these critics, was written as Beckett was reading the newly published Black Diaries of Roger Casement, a volume that contains homoerotic content long considered scandalous for the Irish republican icon and yet offers a remarkable vision of social relations structured around sameness or what Leo Bersani calls ‘homo-ness’. Reading Beckett's novel alongside Casement's diaries reveals the significance of How It Is for thinking an ethico-politics that depends neither on the ideological foundations of the nation-state nor on critical perspectives that emphasise the primacy of difference, but rather on a fundamental reorientation of sociality. In this regard, Beckett's anti-redemptive narrative may be considered a work of penetrating utopian writing, which nonetheless reminds us of the hazards of utopian thought. |
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Keywords: | Beckett Casement homo-ness ethics of alterity postcolonial novel |
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