The ‘Theatre of the Absurd’, the popular label for Samuel Beckett’s theatre, has been challenged over the past decades before its implications were fully explored. This article reconsiders the ‘absurd’ with respect to Beckett and the human/nonhuman relations in the Anthropocene. It draws upon affect theory and posthumanism, arguing that the absurd in Beckett’s theatre takes root in the theatricalization of posthuman affects, which connect the human body and the non-human world. Posthuman affects subvert human sovereignty and disintegrate humans into nothingness. Yet they also give birth to a different cosmic ontology, which involves a call for change in the relationship between the human and the nonhuman. Revisited from the perspective of posthuman affect, the absurd in Beckett’s theatre acquires new complexities that bring glimmering possibilities of endurance and comfort in the face of catastrophe. Chen Chang is an assistant researcher of the English Department at Nanjing University, where she recently completed her PhD dissertation on Beckett and the posthuman body. She has published several articles on Beckett as well as in gender studies.

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重温荒诞：塞缪尔贝克特剧院中的后人类影响

塞缪尔·贝克特剧院的流行标签“荒诞剧院”在过去几十年中一直受到挑战，直到其影响得到充分探索。本文重新思考贝克特的“荒谬”以及人类世的人/非人关系。它借鉴了情感理论和后人类主义，认为贝克特戏剧中的荒谬植根于后人类情感的戏剧化，这种情感连接了人体和非人类世界。后人类影响颠覆了人类的主权，将人类瓦解为虚无。然而，它们也催生了一种不同的宇宙本体论，它呼吁改变人类与非人类之间的关系。从后人类情感的角度重新审视，贝克特戏剧中的荒谬获得了新的复杂性，在灾难面前带来了忍耐和舒适的微光可能性。陈畅是南京大学英语系的助理研究员，她最近完成了关于贝克特和后人体的博士论文。她发表了几篇关于贝克特以及性别研究的文章。