Catastrophe, autonomy and the future of modernism: Trying to understand Adorno's reading of Endgame

Abstract

Theodor Adorno's essay "Trying to Understand Endgame" never refuses the challenge to interpret Endgame but it does not for one moment pretend that theory can unlock the meanings of an aesthetic object without putting its own processes, concepts and style into question - a challenge that is posed by the aesthetic object itself. The autonomy of Beckett's art must be acknowledged yet at the same time be seen to engage in the most demanding questions of our time. How Adorno manages to keep the critical force of these axioms together is the subject of this essay. Far from being rendered irrelevant by postmodernism, I argue in the conclusion that such a critical project provokes the question of the future of modernism, not its demise.