Seeing beyond the Anthropocene with Joyce and Beckett

Abstract

This article suggests that the literary works of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett may offer a means of ‘seeing beyond the Anthropocene’. A close look at Joyce’s “The Dead” and the “Proteus” and “Penelope” episodes of Ulysses as well as at Beckett’s play Endgame and other works will show how these writers’ distinct ways of looking at the world, and the life and death of mortal human beings, provide radical critiques of (and perhaps alternatives to) anthropocentric idealism. Their insights are still highly relevant today as the ecological crisis demands a fundamental reorientation of the (post)human relationship with the earth.

Keywords

• Anthropocene. Ecology. James Joyce. Posthuman. Samuel Beckett