The Posthuman Gothic: Deconstructing the Anthropocentric Gaze in Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone (2016)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59373/2k3qvx24Keywords:
Posthuman Gothic, anthropocentric, mundane, Eco-panic, apocalyptic, exceptionalismAbstract
This research investigates the intersection of Posthumanism and the Gothic type in Caryl Churchill’s play Escaped Alone (2016). It maintains that Churchill engages "Posthuman Gothic" aspects to confront the classic anthropocentric gaze, that situations humans as the principal masters of the universe. Even though the play appearance four old spouses partaking mundane tea-time dialogues, these native acts are punctuated by instinctive, apocalyptic monologues. Subsequent the theoretical structures of Braidotti (2013) and Estok (2018), this study analyzes how Churchill’s shattered dramatic arrangement deconstructs the fantasy of human stability. The "Gothic" in this place is not about ghostly phantom but in the "Eco-panic" of a globe ransacked by human extreme, as depicted in the apocalyptic concepts of Mrs. Jarrett. By combining Nayar’s (2014) outlooks on posthumanism with Smith and Hughes’s (2013) Eco Gothic theory, the paper investigates how the lines between the human, the technological, and the normal have fell down into catastrophic turmoil. The research concludes that Escaped Alone serves as a posthuman manifesto, insistence a shift from human-focused pretension to a recognition of our tricky entanglement with the non-human planet. Churchill’s unwillingness to specify a judgment strengthens the Gothic fear of an unavoidable future. This study provides to the increasing field of posthuman comedy by emphasize how contemporary stage shows completely of human exceptionalism through the glass of a new, terrifyingly household Gothic.
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