The Impossibility of Fleeing: The Deconstruction of Urban Space in Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living

Abstract In The Ontology of the Accident , Catherine Malabou describes the phenomenon of a “form born of the accident, born by accident, a kind of accident,” when due to a “deep cut” in a biography, the individual’s path of life trajectory splits and a “new, unprecedented persona comes to live with the former person” (1–2). This article proposes that Martyna Majok’s 2018 Pulitzer-awarded drama Cost of Living can be understood through Malabou’s extensive work on physical trauma and ruptures to the human life cycle as a result of accidents. In Majok’s work, two intertwining impositions of a new form on an old form are explored through the characters of Ani, a Polish immigrant who has become quadriplegic following a tragic car crash, and Jess, a first-generation graduate who struggles both financially and emotionally to find her place in a city hostile to immigrants. The city backdrop of the play, described by Majok as “ the urban East of America ” (5), acts as perimeter of and boundary to mobility, but also as a conceptual frame. The article uses Malabou’s concept of destructive plasticity to explore how the city with its inbound and outbound mobility becomes a spatial and political frame for articulating the consequences of the lack of exteriority which usually serves as a mental escape and space of existential relief.