Samir Gandesha, Johan H. Hartle and Stefano Marino have published a new edited volume, The “Aging” of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. Fifty Years Later, with Mimesis International.
If 2019 was an “Adornian year” because of the 50th anniversary of the untimely death of Theodor W. Adorno in August 1969, also 2020 has been an “Adornian year” because of the 50th anniversary of the posthumous publication of Adorno’s great but unfinished masterpiece Aesthetic Theory, first published in 1970. Adorno’s intellectual legacy is still alive today and indeed important for the conceptual tools as it still provides to develop a critical, active and negative (instead than acritical, passive and affirmative) relationship with the real. In the vast and complex corpus of Adorno’s entire philosophical oeuvre, his aesthetic theory deserves an especially close and renewed attention today for the variety of intellectual provocations that are still richly offered to us in order to critically understand our age.
Madeline Sharaga has written to us on behalf of Polity Press about two new titles that may be of interest to members of the Association
Correspondence, 1939 – 1969byTheodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem: This new volume brings together the long-running correspondence between two towering figures of German-Jewish intellectual culture, covering a wide range of their discussions on philosophy, religion, history, politics, literature, and the arts.
The New Music: Kranichstein Lectures by Theodor W. Adorno: Based on lectures that Adorno delivered in Darmstadt in the 1950s and 1960s, this volume illuminates Adorno’s thoughts on the relation between traditional and avant-garde as well as the problems of composition in contemporary music.
Polity Press is also offering a discount :
To get 20% off these titles, go to www.politybooks.com and use code ADR21 at checkout.
Caleb J. Basnett has published a new book: Adorno, Politics, and the Aesthetic Animal with the University of Toronto Press.
Here is the blurb from the publisher’s website:
Built upon the principle that divides and elevates humans above other animals, humanism is the cornerstone of a worldview that sanctifies inequality and threatens all animal life. Adorno, Politics, and the Aesthetic Animal analyses this state of affairs and suggests an alternative – a way for humanity to make itself into a new kind of animal.
Theodor W. Adorno has been accused of leading critical theory into a blind alley, divorced from practical social and political concerns. In Adorno, Politics, and the Aesthetic Animal, Caleb J. Basnett argues that by placing the problem of the human/animal distinction at the centre of Adorno’s thought, we discover a new Adorno, one whose critique of domination is in dialogue with classic concerns of political thought forged by Aristotle, including questions of humanist political education and the role of art.
Through a close reading of primary sources, Basnett identifies the principal conceptual structure entwined with the understanding of human life as antagonistic to other animals, and outlines how forms of aesthetic experience disrupt this problematic concept in favour of a reconceptualization of what we call human. His analysis displaces the centrality of the human and attempts to open up a space for its transformation, both in terms of how humans relate to each other and in how humans relate to other animals.
Eleni Philippou (Oxford) has shared with us news of the upcoming book launch for her recently published monograph, Speaking Politically: Adorno and Postcolonial Fiction (Routledge).
Eleni Philippou (Oxford) Daniele Nunziata (Oxford) Monday, May 17, 2021 – 13:00 to 14:00 Livestreamed via Microsoft Teams on 17 May
Join Dr Eleni Philippou in conversation with Dr Daniele Nunziata to discuss her monograph, Speaking Politically: Adorno and Postcolonial Fiction. In this monograph Theodor Adorno’s philosophy engages with postcolonial texts and authors that emerge out of situations of political extremity – apartheid South Africa, war-torn Sri Lanka, Pinochet’s dictatorship, and the Greek military junta. This book is ground-breaking in two key ways: first, it argues that Adorno can speak to texts with which he is not historically associated; and second, it uses Adorno’s theory to unlock the liberatory potential of authors or novels traditionally understood to be “apolitical”. While addressing Adorno’s uneven critical response and dissemination in the Anglophone literary world, the book also showcases Adorno’s unique reading of the literary text both in terms of its innate historical content and formal aesthetic attributes. Such a reading refuses to read postcolonial texts exclusively as political documents, a problematic (but changing) tendency within postcolonial studies. In short, the book operates as a two-way conversation asking: “What can Adorno’s concepts give to certain literary texts?” but also reciprocally, “What can those texts give to our conventional understanding of Adorno and his applicability?” This book is an act of rethinking the literary in Adornian terms, and rethinking Adorno through the literary.
The book can be purchased here: https://www.routledge.com/Speaking-Politically-Adorno-and-Postcolonial-Fiction/Philippou/p/book/9780367437930
Bios: Dr Eleni Philippou is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at OCCT and the Principal Investigator of the Prismatic Jane Eyre Schools project. Beyond her key research interests in postcolonial and world literature, she is also interested in critical theory, comparative literature, and translation studies. She is an award-winning poet, with a number of poems published in both British and international anthologies and journals.
Dr Daniele Nunziata is a Lecturer in English Literature at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford. His research on postcolonial literature has been published in numerous journals (including PMLA and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing) and in the Columbia University Press series, Studies in World Literature. He is a contributor to Writers Make Worlds.
UC BERKELEY’S PROGRAM IN CRITICAL THEORY PRESENTS: Two Adorno-Related Events, with Peter E. Gordon
Two Events with Peter E. Gordon Peter E. Gordon, Amabel B. James Professor of History, Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Philosophy, Harvard University “A Precarious Happiness: Adorno on Negativity and Normativity“
Monday, March 15, 5–7 pm PST Online, register here to receive a personalized Zoom link to join the webinar.
It is a commonplace view that Adorno subscribes to a doctrine of “epistemic negativism,” or “austere negativism.” On this interpretation, Adorno denies that we can have any knowledge of the good, since our society is wholly false. Gordon’s talk offers, first, some arguments against this commonplace reading of Adorno’s work and, second, proposes an alternative explanation for the normativity that underwrites his criticism. First, Gordon argues that the epistemic negativist interpretation is overstated, insofar as it presents society as a) uniform and b) closed; meanwhile, it also leaves Adorno with no resources to defend his theory’s own self-reflexive possibility. Second, against the epistemic negativist interpretation, Gordon argues that Adorno’s practice of immanent critique can succeed only because he acknowledges normative resources in the midst of our false society. This is one underlying commonality between Adorno and Marx. These normative resources are available to us not primarily as concepts but as experiential “traces” of sensuous happiness. In this respect Adorno subscribes to a species “materialism,” broadly construed. But Adorno’s commitment to such sensuous or aesthetic experiences does not leave him vulnerable to charges of hedonism or aestheticism; on the contrary, he insists that these very experiences themselves are precarious: they register the damage of our damaged world even as they also point beyond it…(more)
Tuesday, March 16, 5-7 pm PST Online, register here to receive a personalized Zoom link to join the webinar.
Please join The Program in Critical Theory as it presents Professor Peter E. Gordon of Harvard University in conversation with Martin Jay, UC Berkeley (History; Program in Critical Theory), Pardis Dabashi, University of Nevada, Reno (English), and Robert Kaufman, UC Berkeley (Comparative Literature; Program in Critical Theory). After presentations and colloquy among the panelists, discussion will open to attendees. Those attending are asked to read the “Meditations on Metaphysics” section of Adorno’s Negative Dialectics. An open-source version of Dennis Redmond’s English-language translation of Negative Dialectics can be accessed at any of these three sites:
The Program in Critical Theoryoffers a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory to UC Berkeley doctoral students doing innovative theoretical work in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. In addition to offering coursework on nineteenth-century social theory and philosophy, Frankfurt School and related twentieth-century currents in theory and criticism, and contemporary engagements with critical theory traditions, the Program sponsors graduate fellowships, hosts visiting scholars, and presents lectures, seminars, and symposia for the Berkeley campus and Bay Area community.
To receive regular announcements about The Program in Critical Theory, we invite you to sign up for our mailing list. For more information, or to make a donation, please visit criticaltheory.berkeley.edu.
Please join the Franklin Humanities Institute for its Friday morning series, tgiFHI! tgiFHI gives Duke faculty in the humanities, interpretative social sciences and arts the opportunity to present their current research to their departmental (and interdepartmental) colleagues, students, and other interlocutors in their fields.
Talk description:
In the spring of 1969, when Germany was convulsed by popular unrest and police violence, the editor of the German magazine Der Spiegel begins his interview with the philosopher and sociologist Theodor W. Adorno by saying “Professor Adorno, two weeks ago, the world still seemed in order,” to which Adorno responds, “Not to me.” The interview concludes with Adorno asserting, “I am not in the least ashamed to say very publicly that I am working on a major book on aesthetics.”
While Adorno submitted the oppressive tendencies of modern western society to withering critique, his practice as a public intellectual as well as his philosophy also seek to develop capacities of resistance and hope. The talk offers an account of some of these capacities, centering on two concepts advanced by Adorno: metaphysical experience and the riddle-character of modernist art.
Speaker bio:
Henry W. Pickford is Professor of German and Philosophy. He is the author of The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical Analyses of Holocaust Art; Thinking with Tolstoy and Wittgenstein: Expression, Emotion and Art (also to appear in Russian translation): co-author of In Defense of Intuitions: A New Rationalist Manifesto; co-editor of Der aufrechte Gang im windschiefen Kapitalismus; editor and translator from the German of Theodor W. Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords and from the Russian of Lev Loseff, Selected Early Poems.
This event is cosponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.
Venue – University of Sussex, Falmer Campus
Date: May 1st/2nd, 2020
Friday 1st of May Gardner Tower Attenborough Centre
Saturday 2nd of May Arts A 108
Speakers
Peter Dews (University of Essex)
Estelle Ferrarese (Université de Picardie, Jules Verne)
Kathy Kiloh (OCADU)
Asaf Angerman (Kentucky University)
Phillip Hogh (University of Oldenburg)
Konstantinos Kavoulakos (University of Crete)
Mahon O’Brian (University of Sussex)
Nick Walker (University of Essex/Cambridge)
Jacob Bard-Rosenberg (University of Cambridge)
Iain Macdonald (University of Montreal)
Lydia Goehr (Columbia University)
Antonia Hofstätter (TYSKA-SU)
Bruno Carvalho (São Paolo)
Antoine Athanassiadis (UCD)
Robert Ziegelmann (Humboldt)
Jessica X. Daboin (Paris VIII)
Sabrina Muchova (Charles University, Prague)
Eric-John Russell (Kingston University)
Robert Engelmann (Vanderbilt University)
Hingley (Hertford College, Oxford)
Robert Howlett (Sheffield University)
Gabriel Toupin (University of Motreal)
Aurelia Peyrical (Paris-Nanterre University)
Lea Geckle (Université de Picardie Jules Verne)
Confirmed Participants
Fabian Freyenhagen (University of Essex)
Prof. J G Finlayson (University of Sussex)
Dr. Surti Singh (American University of Cairo)
Dr. Pierre-François Noppen (University of Saskatchewan)
Prof. Brian O’Connor (UCD)
General information:
Traveling to Sussex University is easy. Here is some information on
how to get here.
https://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/directions
Here is a Campus Map:
https://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/campus/map
Accommodation:
Participants at the AAS conference are responsible for booking
their own accommodation. There are many hotels to choose from in
Brighton though bear in mind that it is the Brighton Festival and
the May Bank Holiday, so best book early.
I have arranged for their to be a Conference Discount Rate at
Jury's Inn. They have two hotels. One is by the station. This is
convenient for travelling to and from the airport, and the Falmer
Campus. The other is on the Sea Front, which is a 6 minute taxi
ride, or 15 minute walk from the station. Rooms at the station
hotel are less expensive.
If you select the hotel you want put in the group code <EVENT>
into the booking site, it will give you a 20% discount
NB. May 1st is a bank holiday in England and the start of the
Brighton Festival. Consequently there is pressure on rooms so book
A.S.A.P.
Jurys Inn, Brighton, 101 Stroudley Rd, Brighton BN1 4DJ
Phone: 01273 862121
https://www.jurysinns.com/hotels/brighton-city
Jury's Inn Kings Rd, Brighton BN1 2GS
Phone: 01273 206700
https://www.jurysinns.com/hotels/brighton-waterfront/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=local
There is very limited campus accommodation available
to book at the Institute of Development Studies https://www.ids.ac.uk/
We are pleased to announce that the 9th annual meeting of the Association for Adorno Studies will be hosted by Gordon Finlayson and the University of Sussex. The meeting will be held May 1 and 2, 2020.
On April 26th and 27th 2019, the Association for Adorno Studies convened its 8th annual meeting at the University of São Paulo’s beautiful campus. The meeting was officially opened with remarks by host Vladimir Safatle, Surti Singh, and Pierre-François Noppen. It was the Association’s first meeting in Latin America and a welcome exposure to Adorno studies in Brazil. The well-attended meeting featured a strong program with speakers from Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The papers included excellent engagements with Adorno’s philosophy and aesthetics, as well as timely inquiries into the relevance of Adorno’s thought for current social and political issues.
Amid threats to academic freedom and invectives against cultural Marxism, our meeting coincided with Bolsonaro’s April 26th announcement on twitter that budgetary cuts would directly target philosophy and sociology. With the humanities facing an uncertain future, and colleagues and students in a dubious position, the meeting embodied a spirit of solidarity. Subsequently, a 30% cut to all university budgets was announced and the situation remains precarious today, with some universities uncertain about how they will conclude their current semesters.
During our business meeting, held on the second day, we discussed the general aims of the Association, possibilities for publication in the Association’s journal, Adorno Studies, plans for next year’s meeting with several options in Europe, and the future possibility of returning to Latin America.
On behalf of the entire Association, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Vladimir Safatle and Eduardo Socha for being such generous hosts, navigating us through the fascinating city of São Paulo, and for all their work and organization into making this yet another successful and productive meeting.
