Lukács, Adorno, and Beckett: The Modernism Debate Revisited

Abstract

By revisiting the Lukács-Adorno debate on modernism, this essay surveys the aesthetic theories of Lukács and Adorno: in particular, this essay critically investigates Adorno’s aesthetics presented in Aesthetic Theory from the Lukácsian perspective. The scope of this essay also covers a critical investigation of the recent critical trend that Adorno is more favorably received by critics than Lukács after the rise of post-structuralism. This is because critics tend to esteem Adorno’s “negative dialectic” as a sort of deconstructive practice while considering Lukács’s notion of totality as an expression of Stalinist totalitarianism. Nonetheless, what we should not fail to notice in this regard is that the Lukács-Adorno debate has its own significance not just because it is the culmination of the modernist debate but behind it resides critical issues such as how we should take the social engagement of writers and how art could be an expression of social praxis. The essay will begin with a brief survey of Lukács and Adorno’s aesthetic theories, and then it critically examines Adorno’s essay “Reconciliation under Duress” which allegedly shows the way Adorno successfully confutes Lukácsian theory. Nonetheless, Adorno’s theory in “Reconciliation under Duress” is possible only when he forecloses the possibility of art’s social engagement―thus making an argument of “Negation under Duress.” In the final section of this essay, I read Beckett’s Endgame in terms of and from the perspectives of Lukács and Adorno’s aesthetic theories. Endgame becomes a significant work to frame the debate not only because the debate itself formed around Beckett’s work but also the play which negates any possible engagement of art to its existential condition (i.e. the society), thus praised by Adorno, shows the way Adorno’s aesthetics forecloses any sort of social praxis.