Beckett, posthumanism, and the art of lessness

Abstract

Post-humanism, a comprehensive critique of the demands of humanism, especially the centrality of cognitive and biological structures, offers a new understanding of the realm of language, the role of subject, and the environment. The post-cataclysmic subject in Beckett’s writing uses words that arrive from nowhere, to no purpose, without direc­tion, and without telos. It is therefore in the failure of language that we realize our predicament as prisoners of this symbolic void. Approaching, or interpreting, the work of Beckett may remain at the level of an “attempt”; fulfillment or capturing an absolute meaning will be a mirage, an illusion. Drawing on Jonathan Boulter’s ideas, this article aims at showing what the meaning and relationship of the posthuman and existence in the world is, because the posthuman subject seems to be always within a space; it is situated. This space could be post-apocalyptic; however, the trace of being and existence is there. In other words, it is space and spatiality that define and determine the borderlines of the idea of the posthuman in Beckett’s works. Boulter further argues that the posthu­man a la Beckett challenges the borderlines and the binaries.