The Unmaking of Homo Faber : Beckett and the Exhaustion of Technē

The impact of new technologies, particularly in the fields of communication, transportation, and armaments, is evident in the work of numerous twentieth-century writers and philosophers, from the Italian Futurist F. T. Marinetti’s celebration of speed, to Walter Benjamin’s championing of mechanical reproduction, to Martin Heidegger’s reflections on the ‘question concerning technology’. Samuel Beckett’s engagement with this question is distinctive in a number of respects. In his early work, he suggests that modern technologies have a revelatory power, and he goes on to take advantage of the potentialities of various technological means in his later works, including tape-recording, radio, film, and television. However, he also insists upon a relation between technology and death, one that goes beyond the familiar idea that certain modern technologies have unprecedented destructive potential. For Beckett charts the exhaustion not only of various modern technologies, but also of technē as such. Locating Beckett’s engagement with the question of technology within its historical context, this chapter identifies the place of technology within Beckett’s negative aesthetics, before exploring some of the ways in which that aesthetics is realized, particularly in Beckett’s post-war works.