Kisiels comparative study, or as he phrases it, possible trajectories, is long overdue and especially useful given Becketts popularity and performance frequency in Poland--as far back as 1957 at Teatr Wspóczesny in Warsaw, directed by Jerzy Kreczmar during the Soviet occupation. Kisiel then offers an original perspective to the subject from a bilingual author well positioned to analyse both major authors and theatrical innovators, especially examining what Kisiel calls Beckett and Kantors cluttered universe and more, the need for literary and environmental cartographies in the Anthropocene. His theoretical perspective is quite leading edge, for instance: The overall theoretical corpus is based on the developments in new materialism with regard to its deconstructive and Deleuzian roots. This study resonates well beyond what might be considered the narrow confines of Polish theatre.
--S. E. Gontarski, Robert O. Lawton University Distinguished Professor, Florida State University, USA
Cluttered Universes of Samuel Beckett and Tadeusz Kantor is an engaging and thought-provoking book. Kisiel guides the reader deftly through the complexities of new materialist debates, focusing on materiality, embodiment, and the nonhuman before using this lens to examine the works of Samuel Beckett and Tadeusz Kantor. The result is a compelling and theoretically rich contribution to both Beckett and Kantor studies, but also to the broader fields of new materialism and Anthropocene scholarship. Kisiels readings of embodiment, temporality, and nonhuman agency in Beckett and Kantor are nuanced, creative and intellectually rigorous. His framing of cluttering as both an aesthetic and conceptual force aligned with Karen Barads and Timothy Mortons ideas of coexistence, diffraction, and weird intimacy interweaves materialist thought with artistic practice. By affirming fragility and imperfection, Kisiel unveils how Beckett and Kantor dismantle the subject/object binary and offer new ways to engage with the nonhuman. Despite their androcentric limitations, their works reveal vibrant material agencies and temporal disruptions that prefigure ecological and epistemological shifts. Ultimately, Kisiel suggests that it is only by embracing failure, vulnerability, and openness to the nonhuman, that can we reimagine our place in a shared, entangled world one shaped not by mastery, but by relationality and transformation. Cluttered Universes is a timely study that addresses contemporary ecological concerns and post-anthropocentric theory while casting fresh light on the work of two great twentieth-century authors.
Clare Wallace, Associate Professor of English and American Literatures, Charles University, Czech Republic
