A Panting Consciousness: Beckett, Breath, and Biocognitive Feedback
Palgrave studies in literature, science and medicine 2021 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-74443-4_21 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Consciousness Narrative Cognition Cognitive psychology Breathing Reciprocal Cognitive science Psychotherapist Literature |
| Citations | 3 |
| Key points | Argues that the reciprocal feedback between breath and consciousness, termed 'biocognitive feedback,' is represented and complicated in the narrative work of Samuel Beckett. |
Abstract
Abstract Booming Western interest in mindfulness and meditation has significantly mainstreamed breath and breathing practices, where focussed breathing is taken to be conducive to novel psychological states. Thanks to the regulation of breathing patterns, patterns in our thinking are not just affected but revealed, together with their entanglement with respiration (in a variety of looping effects here considered as ‘biocognitive feedback’). What makes this reciprocal feedback possible is the structural intimacy and co-dependency of breath and consciousness—a dyadic and dynamic relationship already conceptualised by William James, and today reappraised by contemporary, Buddhist-inspired cognitive sciences. Critically integrating psychological, cognitive, phenomenological, and narratological frameworks, this essay investigates the co-dependent intimacy between breath and cognition as represented, explored, and complicated in the narrative work of Samuel Beckett.