This seminar will explore the constellation of dialectics, theatre, and politics in (and in the wake of) Hegel. We'll be thinking about some repercussions of Hegel's infamous pronouncement of the "end of art." Why does Hegel say that art "no longer counts" as the expression of truth, and what does this imply for the practice of philosophy and for political practice? We'll look at the ways in which art stages (literally) its own undoing in theatre and the peculiar afterlife of theatre in philosophy as a scene of pedagogy, a performance, and a political spectacle. The first part of the course will focus on selected portions of Hegel's Aesthetics and the Phenomenology of Spirit. We'll then consider Marx's deployment of the Hegelian dialectic in the Eighteenth Brumaire as he searches (in vain?) for a new revolutionary subject amidst the "farce" of the post-1848 counterrevolution. Finally, we'll consider some surprising reverberations in Beckett's Endgame. While the main authors will be Hegel, Marx, and Beckett, we'll also have occasion to think about other writers (including C.L.R. James, Adorno, Benjamin, Badiou, Karatani,).