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“You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.” These are some of the most quoted lines written by Samuel Beckett, which speak to the impulse of persevering in times of crisis and impossibility. Yet few readers of Beckett agree about what this paradoxical formula could mean, let alone what mode of engagement it would seem to indicate, be it committed, autonomous, or something else entirely. This volume of essays explores what that mode of engagement could be, all the while elucidating the ethical and political stakes of the “ongoing” in both Beckett's life and work. Across multiple disciplines in the humanities, the authors delve into questions of political subjectivity and representation, the ethics of powerlessness and refusal, the aesthetics of syncopation and destitution, multimedia experiments between genre, as well as Beckett's wider impact on transnational itineraries of modernism and philosophy up to the contemporary.

Literature, Modern --- Critical theory. --- Literature --- Continental philosophy. --- Aesthetics. --- Beckett, Samuel, --- Criticism and interpretation. --- LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century --- LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory --- PHILOSOPHY / Movements / General --- PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Critical Theory

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This book offers an archeology of the undeveloped potential of mathematics for critical theory. As Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno first conceived of the critical project in the 1930s, critical theory steadfastly opposed the mathematization of thought. Mathematics flattened thought into a dangerous positivism that led reason to the barbarism of World War II. The Mathematical Imagination challenges this narrative, showing how for other German-Jewish thinkers, such as Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, and Siegfried Kracauer, mathematics offered metaphors to negotiate the crises of modernity during the Weimar Republic. Influential theories of poetry, messianism, and cultural critique, Handelman shows, borrowed from the philosophy of mathematics, infinitesimal calculus, and geometry in order to refashion cultural and aesthetic discourse. Drawn to the austerity and muteness of mathematics, these friends and forerunners of the Frankfurt School found in mathematical approaches to negativity strategies to capture the marginalized experiences and perspectives of Jews in Germany. Their vocabulary, in which theory could be both mathematical and critical, is missing from the intellectual history of critical theory, whether in the work of second generation critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas or in contemporary critiques of technology. The Mathematical Imagination shows how Scholem, Rosenzweig, and Kracauer’s engagement with mathematics uncovers a more capacious vision of the critical project, one with tools that can help us intervene in our digital and increasingly mathematical present.

Mathematics --- Philosophy. --- Logic of mathematics --- Mathematics, Logic of --- Critical theory. --- Critical social theory --- Critical theory (Philosophy) --- Critical theory (Sociology) --- Negative philosophy --- Criticism (Philosophy) --- Philosophy, Modern --- Rationalism --- Sociology --- Frankfurt school of sociology --- Socialism --- Jewish philosophy --- Digital Humanities. --- German-Jewish thought. --- Kracauer. --- Rosenzweig. --- Scholem. --- The Frankfurt School. --- critical theory. --- mathematics. --- PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Critical Theory.

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'In this book, Simon Mussell explores the crucial role played by feeling and affect within the early work of the Frankfurt School. Engaging with recent developments in the field of affect theory, he argues that critical theory has always had an affective politics at its heart. While one of the leading legacies of the Frankfurt School aligns it with a rationalist critique of ideology and mass culture, Mussell draws attention to critical theory’s affective, extra-rational side. Aiming to move beyond conventional readings of key texts, he addresses a selection of topics that meet at the intersection of critique and affect: melancholia, hope, (un)happiness, mimesis and objects. Such themes have received little attention since the philosophical appropriation and gradual de-politicization of critical theory. Against this background, Mussell strives to re-establish the connection between thought and feeling, and to restate the political, visceral and vital demands of the early Frankfurt School. Bringing contemporary theory and interpretation to bear on the work of such key thinkers as Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch and Kracauer, Critical theory and feeling outlines both how and why any renewal of critical theory today needs to reckon with the politics of affect. The book will prove an excellent resource to advanced students, researchers and leading scholars working primarily in critical theory, variants of Marxist social and political thought and affect theory' --Back cover. This book offers a unique and timely reading of the early Frankfurt School in response to the recent ‘affective turn’ within the arts and humanities. Resisting the overly rationalist tendencies of political philosophy, it argues that critical theory actively cultivates a powerful connection between thinking and feeling, and rediscovers a range of often neglected concepts that were of vital importance to the first generation of critical theorists, including melancholia, hope, (un)happiness, objects and mimesis. In doing so, it brings the dynamic work of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch and Siegfried Kracauer into conversation with more recent debates around politics and affect. An important intervention in the fields of affect studies and social and political thought, Critical theory and feeling shows that sensuous experience is at the heart of the Frankfurt School’s affective politics.

Frankfurt school of sociology. --- Critical theory. --- Emotions --- Emotions (Philosophy). --- Society and social sciences. --- Politics and government. --- Political science and theory. --- PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Critical Theory. --- Philosophy & Religion --- Political aspects. --- Philosophy --- History of philosophy, philosophical traditions --- Modern philosophy: since c 1800. --- Feelings --- Human emotions --- Passions --- Psychology --- Affect (Psychology) --- Affective neuroscience --- Apathy --- Pathognomy --- Critical social theory --- Critical theory (Philosophy) --- Critical theory (Sociology) --- Negative philosophy --- Criticism (Philosophy) --- Philosophy, Modern --- Rationalism --- Sociology --- Frankfurt school of sociology --- Socialism --- Schools of sociology --- Critical theory --- Marxian school of sociology