The modernist mind extended: Samuel Beckett, his fiction and the extended mind theory
Manuscrítica: Revista de Crítica Genética September 29, 2015 Olga Beloborodova
This paper describes an ongoing PhD project that challenges the idea that modernist literature turned inward, focusing on mental life as isolated introspection. Using the Extended Mind Theory from cognitive science, the project examines how cognitive processes extend beyond the brain into the environment. The practical analysis centers on Samuel Beckett, investigating both how his writing process involved interaction with material outputs, via genetic manuscript analysis, and how his fictional characters engage with their surroundings. The paper argues that Beckett's fictional minds are embedded in narrative contexts, not merely introspective, and that narrative production involves extracranial cognitive processes.