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Declan Gillespie

Languages and Literature, University of Warwick

Thesis title:

The Protruding Void: Mystical Affect in Samuel Beckett's Prose

Taking as its impetus the underexamined remark from Samuel Beckett’s letters that he was attempting a “mystical writing, so that the void may protrude like a hernia”, this project looks to reconsider this enigmatic void at the centre of Beckett’s work not as a pure negativity, but as a strangely productive and generative void. Such a seemingly paradoxical notion has a long history in mystical thought both east and west, charting back to the ancient Greek khaos or the Mahayana Buddhist concept of tathagatagarbha. Moreover, I argue that Beckett criticism has neglected the decidedly affective character of his pervasive void image, which I look to address by bringing a post-Deleuzian affect theory to bear on such conceptions of the mystical void and its manifestations in Beckett’s work. This project develops a reading which understands Beckett’s apophatic desire to strip away language, to poke holes or tear apart its arbitrary veil, as a desire to let a paradoxically fleshy, substantive void protrude through the threadbare linguistic surface. Ultimately, it will theorise this affective, mystical void to be both the root and end of Beckett’s writing as the immanent condition for artistic creation as well as the ineffable chaos beyond the purview of logocentric representation into which he attempts to write.

Research Area

  • Comparative Literature
  • English Language and Literature
  • Languages and Literature
  • Literary and Cultural Theory

Publications

'Troubled Fiction: Ghosts and Trauma in Jan Carson's Children's Children', Archaeology, Psychoanalysis, Colonialism: The Return of the Repressed in the Modern Age, ed. by Gennaro Ambrosino and Kerry Gibbons (Routledge, forthcoming 2026).

'Beckett's Children: A Literary Memoir by Michael Coffey (review)', symploke, vol. 33, no.1-2 (forthcoming 2025)


Conferences

November 2024: 'One and None: An Enquiry into Mysticism and Affect', Between Mystical Thinking and Practical Experience Symposium, University of Warwick.

October 2024: '"...till they have solidified the flowing...": Mobility and Representation in Samuel Beckett's Early Fiction', Mobility of Forms, Forms of Mobility: Irish Studies Conference, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.

May 2024: 'Troubled Fiction: Ghosts and Trauma in Jan Carson's Children's Children', Archaeology, Psychoanalysis, Colonialism: The Return of the Repressed in the Modern Age, University of Warwick.