Resumen de Technology and the Voices of the More than Human in Beckett’s All That Fall
Though to date the radio play All That Fall has remained somewhat tangential to Beckett ecocriticism, it is an important text in relation to what Mary Bryden has termed Beckett’s critique of ‘species hierarchy’, where the human occupies a privileged place in the order of creation and indeed, the biosphere. Rather, Beckett’s texts foreground mutual inter-species vulnerability, especially in All That Fall, through their encounters with increasingly technologised machines that threaten their existence. Creating a dialogue between discussions of Beckett’s radio plays by, for example, Julie Campbell, Everett Frost, Catherine Laws, Ulrika Maude, and Emilie Morin, and selected ecological readings of Beckett by Paul Davies, Greg Garrard, and Carl Lavery, the essay argues that All That Fall exploits the technologies of radio in a parody of both divine and human models of creation, inviting the listener to attend to the voices of the more than human, however mediated. From that perspective, the essay reflects on the decision to represent the animal sounds by electronically modified human voices in the BBC Third Programme premiere of the play in 1957, directed by Donald McWhinnie.
