Document Type : Original Article

Author

• Khosro Sina

Assistant Professor, Department of Cinema, Faculty of Art and Architecture, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran

Abstract

The present study aims to formulate a “hauntological ontology” framework by integrating the concepts of “theatrical dark matter” (Sofer), “agential realism” (Barad), and “trauma theory” (Caruth) in order to explain the ontology of absence in contemporary drama. Adopting a qualitative fundamental-theoretical method and employing a “diffractive reading” approach, this research analyzes two landmark plays: Waiting for Godot (Beckett) and The America Play (Parks). The findings reveal that absence in these works is not a semantic void but a material force with “gravitational agency” that reconfigures dramatic structure. In this process, stage objects turn into “temporal fossils,” and the boundary between presence and absence is constantly shifted through “agential cuts.” In the diffractive reading, Godot functions as “dark matter” shaping the gravitational field of absence, while the “great hole of history” in Parks’s play materializes the sedimentation of historical traumas. The technique of repetition in Beckett leads to absurdity and emptying, but in Parks, through “rep & rev,” it results in material accumulation and the production of historical weight. The study concludes that understanding absence requires a shift from representational semiotics to material ontology-a realm in which the audience, through embodied engagement with absence, attains ethical responsibility toward the absentees of history.

Keywords

• Ontology of Absence
• Agential Realism
• Theatrical Dark Matter
• Diffractive Reading
• Trauma Theory
• Samuel Beckett
• Suzan-Lori Parks