Benjamin Randolph

Arcadia University
  •  1174
    Waiting for Godot: The Fragmentation of Hope
    Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. forthcoming.
    Waiting for Godot’s many commentators have emphasized the absurdity of hope in the play, but there has not been an account of how the play reprises hope’s historical transformation and weakening in modernity. This essay provides that account, arguing that Beckett’s Waiting for Godot sponsors a form of hope appropriate to the predicaments of modern societies. Godot stages the blockage of hope by reflecting the obsolescence and fragmentation of the religious and progressive legitimations for the c…Read more
  •  215
    Tragic Genealogies: Adorno's Distinctive Genealogical Method
    Radical Philosophy Review 26 (2): 275-309. 2023.
    As genealogy has gained greater disciplinary recognition over the last two decades, it has become increasingly common to call any historically oriented philosophy, such as Theodor W. Adorno’s, “genealogy.” In this article, I show that Adorno’s philosophy indeed performs genealogy’s defining functions of “problematization” and “possibilization.” Moreover, it does so in unique ways that constitute a significant contribution to genealogical practice. Adorno’s method, here called “tragic genealogy,”…Read more