Document Type : Original Article
Author
Assistant Professor, Department of Cinema, Faculty of Art and Architecture, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran.
Abstract
This study investigates the ontology of absence in two major contemporary plays, Samuel Beckett's ‘Waiting for Godot’ and Suzan-Lori Parks's ‘The America Play’, by proposing a novel theoretical framework termed "hauntological ontology." This framework cross-pollinates three distinct concepts: Andrew Sofer's "theatrical dark matter," Karen Barad's "agential realism," and Cathy Caruth's "trauma theory." Executed through a posthumanist, materialist theoretical methodology and a "diffractive reading" approach (which maps patterns of difference and interference rather than seeking mirror-like similarities), the study analyzes "scene-object" and "repetition-event" units in both texts. The findings demonstrate that absence is not a semantic void but a material force with gravitational agency that actively reconfigures dramatic structure, spectatorial perception, and the intra-active boundaries between presence and absence. Onstage properties (boots, a tree, a hole, a television) become temporal sedimentations that physically register the history of suffering, while repetition serves as a performative mechanism for materializing trauma. The pivotal divergence between the two plays lies in the operative physics of iteration: Beckettian repetition triggers temporal depletion and existential fatigue, whereas Parksian repetition (through "repetition and revision") generates material accumulation and historical weight within the performer's body. The study concludes that understanding absence requires an ontological paradigm shift away from representational semiotics toward a material ontology-a realm where the audience, through embodied engagement with absence, achieves primary ethical responsibility toward history's absent figures.
Keywords
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