It is first necessary to understand:
1. Positivist Dialectics: For Hegel dialectics is positive: Contradictions in a situation absolve themselves and the old situation is negated i.e. destroyed and replaced with new, "better" situation. The same negation will then go through a process of working out its contradictions and then will eventually be negated and replaced, this process only ends with the end of history. Therefore for Hegel the Negation of Negation=Positive, progress of society, the engine of development in the world.
2. Negative Dialectics: Adorno: Negation of the Negation doesn't always equal a positive. Development as positive is not true in itself, "positivism" arbitrary and limited to the realm of concepts. "Development" hasn't exactly been positive - WW1, WW2, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. Dialectics need to remain consistently critical - esp. critical of the claim that a thing and its concept are identical. Therefore negative dialectics = ruthless criticism of all that exists. It is a process of analyzing a subject and ascertaining a new understanding of reality through dissecting what something is in reality and the relation with its concept or idea (i.e. freedom, morality, etc.) This dialectical method is constituted by:
Non-identity thinking- operating in the 'force-field' between concept and object, examining contradictions between the object's idea of itself and its actual existence. Understanding something through what it is not. For example Freedom can only be defined in negative terms, corresponding to specific forms of unfreedom. To Adorno, Beckett's plays are Negative Dialectics in practice.
Adorno: " 'Endgame' typifies the dignity of modern art by examining the drama of an era which can no longer tolerate that which constitutes it."
Concepts
1. "Walking in place": Boredom, paralysis and history, repetition that doesn't give stability or reason. No rational resolution to conflicts, no progression.
Waiting for Godot: P. 13, 30, 50, 59 and 109
Endgame: P. 5, 8, 13, 14, 27. 29-31, 35, 37, 69
2. Suffering: "The slingshot to the megaton bomb"- WWI and WWII's proof that history doesn't progress linearly, but only has unity in human suffering.
To Adorno, Auschwitz was proof of meaninglessness of life. In Endgame, the characters suffer in one way or another - Hamm is blind and can't stand up, tormented by his visions he sees in his dreams. Clov can't sit and is dependent on Hamm to live, although he is verbally abused by him. Nagg and Nell can barely move at all and live in trashcans. Adorno says of Endgame: "The dustbins in which the characters live are the emblems of the culture that was reconstructed after Auschwitz."
p.2, 6, 7, 19, 80
3. No resolution: "Meaning" as closure doesn't exist, there is no purpose fulfilled. "As a negation of the absolute idea, content can no longer be identified with reason as it is postulated by idealism; content has become the critique of the omnipotence of reason." To Adorno the absence of an evident "message" is itself the content of the play. Insecurity in not knowing- echo of audience and play in characters and life.
4. Unconscious acknowledged, implicit in 'non-identity thinking': The unconscious is irrational and a central part of the process of Negative Dialectics, which is focused on the non-conceptual. For Adorno concept = reason, rationality, consciousness. Non-identity and Non-conceptual can't be co-opted by capitalism because not understandable but acknowledgeable parts of existence.
Why art is important - it appeals to desire and the unconscious, the most uncontrollable part of humanity.
Endgame is inherently irrational.
5. Difficult Art: Adorno: Art has the ability of saying without saying
6. Capitalism: Major critique
Superstructure/base (master/slave)
Hamm: "Every man his specialty". Specialization, Power, and Class are commented on in Hamm and Clov's interdependency.
These themes are all interconnected and all can be associated with one another.
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