英文摘要 |
This paper focuses on Samuel Beckett’s post World War II plays to study the prosthesis of the machine and the mechanical, in order to rethink the role of human through the discourse of the nonhuman in the Epoch of the Anthropocene. The Second World War is an important indication and threshold for the study of the nonhuman, partly because Beckett is impressively prolific in his exploitation of multimedia for creative impetus in his postwar work, and partly due to the concomitant initiation that the Anthropocene makes its impact. The discussion is two-fold: first, I will focus on Krapp’s Last Tape and Ghost Trio to explore various treatments, applications, and efficacies of nonhuman machines as prostheses. Ruling out transhumanism and posthumanism as fitting camps of humanisms to accommodate Beckett’s work, I will then move on to explore the characters’mechanical manifestation of mathematic algorithms in Come and Go and Quad, based on a dehumanizing framework to devise an analogy that humans resemble nonhumans. I shall invoke Heinrich von Kleist’s“On the Marionette Theatre”to discuss the economy and grace in both plays, and to examine how Beckett creates maximum efficiency, impact, and potentiality through permutations of minimum elements. Highlighting the quintessential nonhuman quality of Beckett’s postwar plays can shed light on the essence of the humanities, and offer an alternative to reassess the position of human beings and the value of humanity in the Anthropocene. |