Mary Dawson: Affect & Ageing in Barbara Pym’s ‘Quartet in Autumn’

Technecast

Welcome back to the Technecast! Our theme for this month is ‘Affect’, thinking about feelings, forces, and in-between states. Since the affective turn in the early 1990s, the humanities and social sciences have witnessed a profound and renewed interest in how feelings function, how they move, stick to, and shape bodies (both human and non-human) and worlds. We are delighted to welcome Mary Dawson to the Technecast for our first episode on affect. This episode explores the idea of aging as a form of affective potential through a reading of Barbara Pym’s ‘Quartet in Autumn’ (1977). In contemporary society getting old is seen as a problem and aged bodies are often unsettling reminders of a future understood in terms of loss and decline. In contrast, thinking about ageing through Pym’s ‘Quartet’ and Gilles Deleuze’s work on affect and sense suggests an alternative perspective on growing older. Pym’s novel is about four colleagues approaching retirement. Through a close analysis of the text, this essay shows how nonsense in ‘Quartet’ goes beyond deconstructing social conceptions of ageing to re-think what it means to grow old. Deleuze suggests that if common sense keeps bodies in check, then non-sense is a way of orienting bodies towards affect and unleashing unrealised potential. Instead of thinking of age as a problem, ‘Quartet’ re-imagines ageing as a becoming, a never complete but always open movement towards. In other words, ‘Quartet’ is a novel which thinks differently about being human by thinking differently about what it means to get older. Mary Dawson is a PhD candidate in the English department at the University of Leeds. Mary holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Liverpool, an MSc in International Development from London, South Bank University and an MA in English Literature from the University of Leeds. Mary’s PhD research focuses on mid-century British fiction, critical posthumanism, disability studies and affect theory. Mary’s PhD is fully funded by the AHRC White Rose consortium, and her paper for this symposium is titled ‘Affect and Ageing in Pym’s ‘Quartet’. Following the Affective Turn: https://followingaffect.wixsite.com/researchPresented by Polly Hember. The Technecast is funded by the Techne AHRC-DTP, and edited by Polly Hember, Julien Clin & Felix Clutson.Contact: [e-mail] / @technecast *Image: Alice and the Dodo illustrated by John Tenniel in Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' first published edition, 1866, p. 35.Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.com