Nothing New Anew: Adorno, Deleuze, Beckett

Abstract

The article begins with Adorno’s paradoxical claim that modernity is characterised by the loss of the New. From this negative claim the article draws a positive consequence for the modern conception of the New: the absence of the New implies that the New is not an object of knowledge and that it is at the same time positively determined precisely by this very absence of knowledge of itself. The article goes on to analyse this initial contrariety through a series of oppositions between sensation and language, lived and scientific experience, subject and discourse, the inner and the outer, etc., thereby showing that the New is not to be situated in the realm beyond knowledge, but precisely in the cross-section of the enumerated oppositions. The article goes on to examine the New in the context of Deleuze’s conceptions of minor language and stuttering, concluding with Beckett’s concept of the New, which presents an absolutely singular way of escaping the modern fate of the loss of the New.