The Extended Mind and Multiple Drafts: Beckett's Models of the Mind and the Postcognitivist Paradigm

Insofar as writing can be regarded as a form of thinking, authors' manuscripts may serve as tools for interdisciplinary research in the area between literary studies and cognitive philosophy. This article studies the manuscript versions of Beckett's late texts “Ceiling” and as a case study to analyze the ways in which genetic Beckett studies can contribute to recent “enactivist” developments in cognitive philosophy. In terms of methodology, the article proposes to extend Brian Richardson's concept of “denarration” with a genetic dimension in order to study the way Beckett “decreated” traditional models of the mind and prefigured new ones.