The Homo Sacer in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

Abstract

Agamben’s concept of homo sacer may have Roman genesis but its
modern and postmodern connotation is far more consequential.
Since the present world is a cauldron of biopolitical activities, its
effect on the general populace, especially after the Second World War
and the cold war, is self-evident. The nation-states have been acting
like sovereign powers in the name of security and democracy. The
common citizenry, both willingly and involuntarily, is compelled to
give up its basic rights and empower the sovereign powers to subjugate
it for moderately trivial comforts. Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot
epitomizes the predicament of the common person in the form of
its characters, Vladimir, Estragon, and Lucky. The former two forgo
their daily activities in exchange for a meeting with a person named
Godot who keeps them in a perpetual state of exception that places

them outside spatial-temporal reality. Lucky, on the other hand, self-
subjugates to elucidate the dehumanizing effect on the populace

because of the biopolitical nature of the world. Hence, this paper aims
to encapsulate the Roman and ancient connotation of the term homo
sacer in the context of Beckett’s play.