‘Consequences of this Climate’: Disabling Environmental Effects in Beckett's Late Work

Abstract

This article analyses the change in the representation of disability in Beckett's work from medical impairments in the 1940s and 1950s to bodies that are limited by environmental conditions from the 1960s onwards. I suggest the term ‘disability effects’ to describe the condition of characters who are limited or harmed by the harsh environments of Beckett's imagination. A ‘disability effect’ arises from the interaction between a harmful environment and a human body through conditions such as confinement, toxic atmosphere, or extreme heat. While the social model of disability is useful for reading disability in the earlier works, it does not adequately account for the environmental pressures that lead to disability effects. Instead, the ecological–enactive model developed by Toro et al. provides a better framework that allows for a variety of subjective responses to the restrictions imposed by the Beckett's narrative ecologies. The representation of disability in Beckett's later work thus places at the centre of attention harmed bodies that are marginalised in too many discourses around the Anthropocene or held up as a warning sign for the terrible consequences of inaction, and can be read as a critique of ableist attitudes, which are also common in environmental movements. As climate change has become a present reality rather than a future danger to be averted, a rapidly changing environment is generating a range of disability and disability effects affecting whole populations and amplifying the shortcomings of the ableist social model that views disability as an exception that must be accommodated by an abled society. Beckett's work can help us come to terms with the continuity of adverse conditions, while leaving a space for the variability of personal adaptations.