Cluttered Universes of Samuel Beckett and Tadeusz Kantor

Michał Kisiel is a literary scholar, translator, editor, and assistant professor at Jan Dlugosz University in Czestochowa, Poland. In 2019, he received his PhD in literary studies. He has published in Journal of Beckett Studies, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, ER(R)GO, Zoophilologica, and Review of International American Studies, among other places. He is an editorial team member of ER(R)GO: Theory – Literature – Culture and a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences Commission on Literary History (Katowice Branch). His academic interests include experimental literature, deconstruction, materialist theories of the nonhuman, contemporary poetry, theatre and drama, and environmental humanities.

Kisiel’s comparative study, or as he phrases it, “possible trajectories,” is long overdue and especially useful given Beckett’s popularity and performance frequency in Poland--as far back as 1957 at Teatr Współczesny in Warsaw, directed by Jerzy Kreczmar during the Soviet occupation. Kisiel then offers an “original perspective” to the subject from a bilingual author well positioned to analyse both major authors and theatrical innovators, especially examining what Kisiel calls Beckett and Kantor’s “cluttered universe” and more, the “need for literary and environmental cartographies in the Anthropocene.” His theoretical perspective is quite “leading edge,” for instance: “The overall theoretical corpus is based on the developments in new materialism with regard to its deconstructive and Deleuzian roots.” This study resonates well beyond what might be considered the narrow confines of Polish theatre.--S. E. Gontarski, Robert O. Lawton University Distinguished Professor, Florida State University, USACluttered Universes of Samuel Beckett and Tadeusz Kantor is an engaging and thought-provoking book. Kisiel guides the reader deftly through the complexities of new materialist debates, focusing on materiality, embodiment, and the nonhuman before using this lens to examine the works of Samuel Beckett and Tadeusz Kantor. The result is a compelling and theoretically rich contribution to both Beckett and Kantor studies, but also to the broader fields of new materialism and Anthropocene scholarship. Kisiel’s readings of embodiment, temporality, and nonhuman agency in Beckett and Kantor are nuanced, creative and intellectually rigorous. His framing of “cluttering” as both an aesthetic and conceptual force – aligned with Karen Barad’s and Timothy Morton’s ideas of coexistence, diffraction, and weird intimacy – interweaves materialist thought with artistic practice. By affirming fragility and imperfection, Kisiel unveils how Beckett and Kantor dismantle the subject/object binary and offer new ways to engage with the nonhuman. Despite their androcentric limitations, their works reveal vibrant material agencies and temporal disruptions that prefigure ecological and epistemological shifts. Ultimately, Kisiel suggests that it is only by embracing failure, vulnerability, and openness to the nonhuman, that can we reimagine our place in a shared, entangled world – one shaped not by mastery, but by relationality and transformation. Cluttered Universes is a timely study that addresses contemporary ecological concerns and post-anthropocentric theory while casting fresh light on the work of two great twentieth-century authors.Clare Wallace, Associate Professor of English and American Literatures, Charles University, Czech Republic

• AcknowledgementsINTRODUCTIONThe Fear of Meaning SomethingCluttered UniversesBringing Matter Back to LifeThe Two Ends of the WorldPutting the Void to WorkFrom Difference to DiffractionBibliographyCHAPTER 1. Diffraction of I: Diffractive Memories and Kantor’s Theatre of DeathExit HistoryDark Crammed HolesDiffraction and RepetitionPhotographic ApparatusesDiffraction of IBibliographyCHAPTER 2. “Unspeakable Homes”: Uninhabitable Spaces and the Ruins of the Everyday WorldI Am Not I, Therefore I Am (at Home)The Parrot and the GraveDusty ArchivesElevating the RagsNeitherBibliographyCHAPTER 3. Resilient Survivors: Insects, Mannequins, and the Death of the NonhumanNonhuman Noises, Excessive ImagesHeretic MachinesDying Is Never DeathThe Logic of the Swarm Coda: Insect TechnologiesBibliography CHAPTER 4. Elsewhere but Here: Beckett’s Exhausted Ecologies and Liminal IntimaciesA Tree with Too Many Leaves The Ecopoetics of Exhaustion Thus Flesh and Bone Subsist Intimacy Is Persistence Global FailuresBibliography CONCLUSIONSIndex