The Impossibility of Fleeing: The Deconstruction of Urban Space in Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living

Abstract

Abstract In The Ontology of the Accident, Catherine Malabou describes the phenomenon of a “form born of the accident, born by accident, a kind of accident,” when due to a “deep cut” in a biography, the individual’s path of life trajectory splits and a “new, unprecedented persona comes to live with the former person” (1–2). This article proposes that Martyna Majok’s 2018 Pulitzer-awarded drama Cost of Living can be understood through Malabou’s extensive work on physical trauma and ruptures to the human life cycle as a result of accidents. In Majok’s work, two intertwining impositions of a new form on an old form are explored through the characters of Ani, a Polish immigrant who has become quadriplegic following a tragic car crash, and Jess, a first-generation graduate who struggles both financially and emotionally to find her place in a city hostile to immigrants. The city backdrop of the play, described by Majok as “the urban East of America” (5), acts as perimeter of and boundary to mobility, but also as a conceptual frame. The article uses Malabou’s concept of destructive plasticity to explore how the city with its inbound and outbound mobility becomes a spatial and political frame for articulating the consequences of the lack of exteriority which usually serves as a mental escape and space of existential relief.