The intimate hybridity of roadkill: A Beckettian view of dismay and persistence

While theoretical problems associated with “wilderness” have been widely noted, less attention has been granted to the potential effects produced by wilderness’s dissolution. The present paper highlights the potential emotional consequences of the elimination of wilderness in the modern world by examining the topic of roadkill. Roadkill are now ubiquitous throughout the world and a thoroughly emblematic feature of contemporary life. They also present a concise manifestation of hybridity, being entities created through the dissolution of wilderness and the more intimate integration of society and nature. To examine these hybrid formations, the present paper utilizes the work of Samuel Beckett, particularly the text of The Unnamable, to draw out some of the emotions that emerge from our engagement with roadkill. The Unnamable’s narrator is typified by flows (in word and body) and by persistence, characteristics which resonate with the embodied beings of roadkill, or rather the “have-not-always-been-roadkill.” In short, roadkill suggest animals are as persistent as humans, a characteristic which is apparent even in death. I contend these vital, non-representable qualities, which embody a deeper evolutionary commonality of animacy than the face of the fallen, generate misgivings about ourselves and hybridity. Advocates of wilderness dissolution must acknowledge these interminable consequences.