Something or Nothing: Freedom and Negativity in Beckett and Adorno

Since his notorious 1961 lecture, ‘Trying to Understand Endgame’, Theodor W. Adorno’s name has frequently been coupled with that of Samuel Beckett. This monograph offers a radical reappraisal of the intellectual affinities between these two figures, whose paths crossed all too fleetingly. Specifically, the book argues for a preoccupation with the concept of freedom in Beckett’s works⎯one which situates him as a profoundly radical and even political writer. Adorno’s own more explicit reconceptualization of the nature of freedom and its scarcity in modernity offers a unique lens through which to examine the way Beckett’s preserve a minimal space of freedom that acts in direct opposition to an unfree social totality.