Author Archives: Pierre-François Noppen

10th Meeting Recap

03 Wednesday Jul 2024

Posted by in Association for Adorno Studies, Conference Summary

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As the readers of this blog know, the 10th meeting of the Association for Adorno Studies was held on May 30-31. The event took place on the beautiful “Pôle Citadelle” campus of the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, in Amiens, France. We owe the stunning design of the campus to the Italian architect Renzo Piano (see pictures below).

Our very heartfelt thanks go to Estelle Ferrarese and her team: Anne-Gaëlle Bled, Cassandre Caballero, Lea Gekle, Frederico Lyra, Annette de Moura and Salima Naït Ahmed, for the amazing work they did on planning and organizing this very successful meeting. This year the program was organized around a very timely theme in Adorno studies: “History and Social Theory”. It brought together a host of excellent scholars, several of whom are emerging scholars or new to the Association. Our thanks to all the presenters for their very thought-provoking and high-caliber papers on various aspects of Adorno’s views on the theme and to all the other participants who chaired sessions and partook in the lively discussions throughout the event. We counted participants from France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Brazil, the UK, Canada and the US at this event.

As is our custom, the business meeting was held on the second day at lunch time. The main order of business was the election of a new executive. I am thrilled to announce that William Ross has accepted the role of President and Paul Dablemont that of Vice-President for a term of 3 years. Let us all thank them for their commitment to the AAS, congratulate them very warmly on their nomination and wish them the best for a very successful tenure!

Three other points of business are worth highlighting:

First, the Harvard meeting (to be hosted by Peter Gordon) has been pushed to the spring of 2026. William and Paul have been at work on a plan for 2025. They will be in touch with news about it over the summer.

Second, you can now forward information to be posted on the blog directly to William and Paul (follow the links above). They will be taking over the administration of this blog (at least until further notice).

Third, stay tuned for news about the relaunch of our journal, Adorno Studies, at Mimesis Press. It promises much!

I attach some pictures that document the event. They include pictures of the enchanting floating gardens (The Hortillonnages), a tour of which Estelle and her team had the marvellous idea to organize for us.

New Book: Peter E. Gordon, A Precarious Happiness

05 Wednesday Jun 2024

Posted by in Publications, Theodor W. Adorno

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Peter E. Gordon published a fascinating new book on Adorno earlier this year, entitled A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and The Sources of Normativity (Chicago UP). Here‘s the link to the publisher’s website. And here’s the publisher’s blurb:

“A strikingly original account of Theodor Adorno’s work as a critique animated by happiness.

“Gordon’s confidently gripping and persistently subtle interpretation brings a new tone to the debate about Adorno’s negativism.”—Jürgen Habermas
 
Theodor Adorno is often portrayed as a totalizing negativist, a scowling contrarian who looked upon modern society with despair. Peter E. Gordon thinks we have this wrong: if Adorno is uncompromising in his critique, it is because he sees in modernity an unfulfilled possibility of human flourishing. In a damaged world, Gordon argues, all happiness is likewise damaged but not wholly absent. Through a comprehensive rereading of Adorno’s work, A Precarious Happiness recovers Adorno’s commitment to traces of happiness—fragments of the good amid the bad. Ultimately, Gordon argues that social criticism, while exposing falsehoods, must also cast a vision for an unrealized better world.”

New book: Illusion and Fetishism in Critical Theory

21 Thursday Mar 2024

Posted by in Critical Theory, Publications, Theodor W. Adorno, Uncategorized

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Vassilis Grollios wrote about the publication of his new book at Routledge. The full title reads: Illusion and Fetishism in Critical Theory: A Study of Nietzsche, Benjamin, Castoriadis and the Situationists. Here’s the link and here the publisher’s blurb:

“Through the negative dialectics of Theodore Adorno, Illusion and Fetishism in Critical Theory offers an examination of Nietzsche, Benjamin, Castoriadis and the Situationists, who put the concept of illusion at the forefront of their philosophical thought.

Vasilis Grollios argues that these political philosophers, except Castoriadis, have up to now been wrongly considered by many scholars to be far from the line of thinking of negative dialectics, Critical Theory and the early Frankfurt School/Open Marxist tradition. He illustrates how these thinkers focused on the illusions of capitalism and attempted to show how capitalism, by its innate rationale, creates social forms that are presented as unavoidable and universal, yet are historically specific and of dubious sustainability.

Providing a unique overview of concepts including illusion, totality, fetishization, contradiction, identity thinking and dialectics, Grollios expertly reveals how their understanding of critique can help us open cracks in capitalism and radicalize democratic social practice today. Illusion and Fetishism in Critical Theory is a must read for scholars of political theory and political philosophy, critical theory, the Frankfurt School, sociology and democratic theory.”

New translation of Adorno: Orpheus in the Underworld

18 Monday Mar 2024

Posted by in Theodor W. Adorno

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A new translation of Adorno’s work by Douglas Robertson will soon be published at The University of Chicago Press. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

The book “Delves into Theodor W. Adorno’s lesser-known musical career and successful music criticism.

Theodor W. Adorno is recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most prominent social theorists. Though best known for his association with the Frankfurt School of critical theory, Adorno began his career as a composer and successful music critic.

Comprehensive and illuminating, Orpheus in the Underworld centers on Adorno’s concrete and immediate engagement with musical compositions and their interpretation in the concert hall and elsewhere. Here, Adorno registers his initial encounters with the compositions of the Second Viennese School, when he had yet to integrate them into a broad aesthetics of music. Complementarily essays on Bela Bartók, Jean Sibelius, and Kurt Weill afford insight into his understanding of composers who did not fit neatly into the dialectical schema propounded in the Philosophy of New Music. Additionally, essays on recording and broadcasting show Adorno engaging with these media in a spirit that is no less productive than polemical and focused as sharply on their potentialities as on their shortcomings.

Orpheus in the Underworld offers a captivating exploration of Adorno’s musical compositions, shedding new light on his understanding of influential composers and his critical perspectives on recording and broadcasting.”

CFP – ‘Adorno’s Sociology’, July 4-6

06 Wednesday Mar 2024

Posted by in Call for Papers, Theodor W. Adorno

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Frank Welz wrote to let us know about a conference that he and his colleagues are organizing at the University of Innsbruck which should be of interest to the readers of this blog. Here’s the detail:

International Adorno Conference, July 4-6

Research Center Social Theory

University of Innsbruck, Austria

Abstracts submission deadline: April 1, 2024.

Here’s their webpage and the call for papers.

New Book by Lambert Zuidervaart: Adorno, Heidegger, and the Politics of Truth

08 Monday Jan 2024

Posted by in Critical Theory, Publications, Theodor W. Adorno

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Lambert Zuidervaart (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Institute for Christian Studies and University of Toronto) wrote to us today about his new book: Adorno, Heidegger, and the Politics of Truth, which will appear at SUNY Press in February. You can find the details here. Lambert also published a blog post about his book: “Hope for Truth in a Post-Truth World”, which you can read it here.

Here’s the blurb from the publisher:

“An elusive and complex idea of truth lies at the center of Theodor Adorno’s thought. Yet he never spells out what it is. Through close readings of Negative Dialectics, Aesthetic Theory, and related course lectures, Lambert Zuidervaart reconstructs Adorno’s conception of truth, contrasts it with the conceptions of Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault, and explores its relevance for contemporary philosophy, art, and politics. Adorno regards truth as a dynamic constellation in which various dialectical polarities intersect. The most decisive polarity, Zuidervaart argues, occurs between society as it has developed and the historical possibility of a completely transformed world. Critically reconstructed, Adorno’s conception of truth can help inspire hopeful critiques of an allegedly post-truth society.”

And here’s a review:

“Zuidervaart, who already published numerable books on critical theory in general and Adorno in particular, again shows himself to be an excellent and critical reader of Adorno. The greatest strength of Adorno, Heidegger, and the Politics of Truth is that it offers an in-depth study of Adorno’s concept of truth, based on a thorough reading and understanding, and an original and critical interpretation of Adorno’s work. It also surpasses that in demonstrating the need for a conception of ‘truth as a whole’ beyond propositional truth, and the need to link the concept of truth to social critique and social hope. All this makes this book a must-read for Adorno scholars.” — Thijs Lijster, author of Benjamin and Adorno on Art and Art Criticism: Critique of Art

New Book: Estelle Ferrarese, Le marché de la vertu

19 Tuesday Sep 2023

Posted by in Critical Theory, Publications, Theodor W. Adorno

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Estelle Ferrarese wrote to us about the publication of her new book: Le marché de la vertu. Critique de la consommation éthique (tentative English title: The Market of Virtue: Critique of Ethical Consumption). The book appeared at the legendary Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, located on the Place de la Sorbonne in Paris. The book is, of course, in French. At our last meeting in Brighton, UK (May 2023), Estelle Ferrarese presented some of her latest work – or the rough equivalent of a chapter of this new book. The title of her presentation was: “Reactualizing Adorno’s Theory of Exchange: A Critique of Ethical Consumption”.

Here’s the publisher’s blub:

“La propagation actuelle de pratiques de consommation prônant un « juste » prix ou des achats « responsables », fonde son succès sur une prétendue critique du capitalisme à l’échelle de la vie quotidienne.

Ce livre prend le contrepied de l’opinion dominante et démontre avec les outils de la Théorie critique que la consommation éthique collabore à l’ordre même auquel elle s’efforce d’échapper. Elle dissimule le fait que le marché désarme perpétuellement les normes morales qui y sont injectées. Elle ramène inadéquatement le capitalisme à des mécanismes psychologiques, comme une humeur prédatrice, qu’il serait possible de brider par la vertu. Elle octroie à l’intention individuelle une maîtrise absolue sur le monde, à même de le métamorphoser sans reste. Et avec sa tendance au compte – des dommages ou des efforts vertueux –, la consommation éthique concourt à la forme que le marché impose au monde, celle d’une commensurabilité généralisée.”

Conference: “Flaschenpost: Critical Theory at 100” @ Harvard U, Oct. 6-7, 2023

11 Monday Sep 2023

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As part of its Harvard Colloquium for Intellectual History, the Center for European Studies Harvard is hosting a two-day conference this October. The full title is: Flaschenpost: Critical Theory at 100 – The European and American Reception, 1923-2023.

The conference brings together very prominent scholars and representatives of what is Critical Theory today, 100 years after the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research was first founded. It also marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Jay’s now classic: The Dialectical Imagination.

You can find the program here.