Cross-Species Contagion in Beckett’s Endgame: A Posthumanist (Re)reading

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the intersection between posthumanism and ecological thought in Beckett’s Endgame. Based on a reception-informed approach, this article revisits Beckett’s Endgame with a special focus on how the recent context of pandemic affects our reading of the human in his work. Building on the existing body of critical response to Beckett’s re-evaluation of the human, we particularly contend that Beckett’s conception of the (post)human as a molecular being overcomes the humanist notion of human sovereignty and affirms, instead, continuity and relatedness of all lifeforms. We further want to argue that the metaphor of molecular (d)evolution evoked in Endgame undermines the unity of the self-contained subject and serves as a basis for an ethical response to the human and nonhuman other. To explicate this molecular vision, we examine how the play’s metaphorical engagement with cross-species contagion undermines humans’ claims to species exceptionalism and allows for inter-species connections. In this connection, we seek to align Beckett’s apocalypse in Endgame with Colebrook’s conception of the apocalypse as an ‘inhuman event,’ with ‘a sense of a certain mode of humanity reaching its end and giving way to other forms.’