Dismantling authenticity: Beckett, Adorno, and the ‘postwar‘

Miller, Tyrus

doi:10.1080/09502369408582186

Cited by 1 publication

(4 citation statements)

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“…‘[I]n the camps it was’ truly ‘no longer the individual that died but the exemplar’ (2001b: 355*). Adopting vocabulary from industry and enterprise, Adorno speaks of the Nazis’ ‘mass-production and cost-cutting of death’ (1978: 233; see also Miller, 1994: 50). The ‘murder of millions through administration’ (Adorno, 2001b: 355) generated as many interchangeable deaths.…”

Section: Bungled Deathmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 3. Adorno’s views on how artworks express reality depend on his theory of mimesis, which cannot be explored here (see Cahn, 1984; Geml, 2008; Miller, 1994: 45–49; Nicholsen, 1997; Schultz, 1990). …”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Yet at least one of these arguments points to the more seldom considered sociological dimension of his Beckett interpretation. 6 Adorno engages with Beckett in opposition to existentialism (see Critchley, 1997: 148–149; Miller, 1994: 49–50; Schmid Noerr, 1996: 30–38). Beckett, he contends, does not disclose ‘transcendent “being”… outside social processes’, but ‘being’ as ‘an outcome of capitalist development’ (Boxall, 2000: 40).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…7 Adorno (1992: 80 [henceforth NL2 ]) endorses Sartre’s ‘Durkheimian’ description of literary works as faits sociaux . Beckett presents ‘social … contents of our time’ (Adorno et al, 1994: 87 [henceforth ODK ]; see also Miller, 1994: 43–45). Although Adorno (1969b: 142) cited Beckett’s oeuvre as a ‘critique of present society’ at the 1968 German Sociology Conference, his sociological writings rarely mention Beckett.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lifelong death penalty: Adorno, Beckett’s drama, sociology

Benzer

2012

Journal of Classical Sociology

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The article examines the sociological dimension of Adorno’s analyses of Beckett’s dramatic work. It unearths intersections between Adorno’s literary-critical writings on Beckett, on the one hand, and his sociological investigations of contemporary social life and methodological writings on nineteenth- and twentieth-century social science, on the other. The article demonstrates how Adorno’s sociological and methodological thought informed his reading of Beckett and how his engagement with Beckett helped him deepen his critical inquiries into capitalist society. Adorno deciphers Beckett’s dramas as expressions of a damaged individual existence and as articulations of underlying social conditions: their functional exchange context, the mechanism of social reproduction, reification, and estrangement. These diagnoses of injured individual and social life draw attention to Beckett’s problematization of death. Adorno’s comments on death in Beckett elucidate an important connection between the emancipatory dimensions of his Beckett interpretation and his sociology.

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