‘Pfft’: Samuel Beckett and the Ecology of Breathing in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyse how breathing, illustrated and expanded by Samuel Beckett’s selected works, might be reconsidered as a conceptual category and corporeal phenomenon in the Anthropocene. The paper discusses three instances in Beckett’s corpus where breathing resurfaces as neither exclusively human nor nourishing. It is argued that breathing forms an intricate web of relationships with other human and nonhuman actants. Consequently – and this is especially important in the Anthropocene and the times of environmental degradation – breathing makes collective experience and coexistence deeper and more apparent; yet, this collective dimension also signifies inherent vulnerability rooted in the body’s porosity, as respiration is always threatened with contamination, which might make it frail. In this light, the article includes textual analyses of Breath and Not I, two works that conjoin the deterioration of the world with respiratory crises. The analyses of Beckett’s works are juxtaposed with selected concepts derived from new materialism, object-oriented ontology, and deconstruction. As I argue, reading Beckett and breath in the context of the Anthropocene should draw our utmost attention since it might help us radically alter our thinking as we face possible, if not inevitable, catastrophes that challenge the binary of finitude and continuity and that of life and death.