Author Archives: Pierre-François Noppen

New Book: The Dynamic of Play and Horror in Adorno’s Philosophy

10 Monday Jul 2023

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

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Bence Kun wrote to announce the publication of his book on Adorno next fall at De Gruyter, which should be of interests to readers of this blog. At he puts it, “the work deals with Adorno’s concept of playfulness and horror, focusing on his philosophical rhetoric and ‘Negative Dialectics’.”

And here’s the publisher’s blurb:

“Long before Wittgenstein drew attention to its complexities, the concept of play had captured the interest of theorists for millennia. How do games contribute to our knowledge of the world? Wherein lies their universal appeal? Play is usually associated with a certain blitheness and buoyancy – could it nevertheless be argued that playfulness is not quite as innocent as it might seem?

Bence Kun draws on Adorno’s writings to explore the relation between philosophical play (understood here as imaginative thought as well as experimental expression) and an experience of dread Adorno links to children’s first encounter with death. By investigating his less familiar works, some of which have not yet been translated, Kun challenges the received view on Adorno’s approach to metaphysics, the role of systematic inquiry and the modern condition. As he has Adorno say, the originary impression of shock at the heart of philosophical reflection can only be fully apprehended through an open-ended and defiantly creative intellectual practice.”

The release date is Oct. 23!

2024 Meeting of the AAS

06 Thursday Jul 2023

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We are thrilled to announce that Estelle Ferrarese has very graciously accepted to host the next meeting of the Association for Adorno Studies. It will take place at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, in Amiens, France. The meeting is scheduled for May 30-31, 2024. Details will follow.

Previous meetings:

May 5-6, 2023 – University of Sussex

April 26-27, 2019 – University of São Paulo

May 4-5, 2018 – American University in Cairo

March 24-25, 2017 – Duke University

April 29-30, 2016 – Université de Montréal

October 9-10, 2015 – The New School

March 7-8, 2014 – University College Dublin

March 22-23, 2013 – Temple University

March 2-3, 2012 – Johns Hopkins University

Recap of the 9th Annual Meeting

12 Monday Jun 2023

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The 9th annual meeting of the Association for Adorno Studies took place in the beautiful coastal city of Brighton, UK, in early May. The meeting was held over two days in the venues of the Leonardo Hotel (May 5th: Brighton Station; May 6th: Brighton Waterfront). It was the first time since 2019 that the AAS was able to hold its annual meeting. It was very exciting to reconnect in person and to see so many new speakers and participants join our adventure.

Our thanks go to the Centre for Social and Political Thought of the University of Sussex for hosting the event. A very special thanks to Gordon Finlayson and Marina Lademacher for all the work they invested in organizing this wonderful event with such a stimulating and high-calibre program! The meeting was very well attended (we counted over 45 participants) and convened speakers and participants from several countries, including the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Greece and Brazil. Amongst other things, this year’s program offered a concentration of remarkable papers on Adorno’s aesthetics and philosophy of music, which made for a very sustained and thought-provoking conversation over two days. The last day ended with a much-anticipated author-meet-critics panel devoted to Iain Macdonald’s What Would Be Different. Thanks to Taylor Carman, Peter E. Gordon, Iain Macdonald and Nick Walker for the fascinating exchanges!

We held our business meeting on the second day of the event at lunch time, as is our custom. While members of the AAS met a number of times more or less informally during our pandemic hiatus, this was our first formal business meeting since 2019. Surti Singh (President) and Pierre-Francois Noppen (Vice-President) co-chaired the meeting. They shared news about recent developments in the AAS and submitted a number of points for discussion. Significant changes have happened over the last three years. And we have many people to thank for their help and their efforts in making these changes possible. Here’s an overview:

First, Martin Shuster and Kathy Kiloh (founders of the AAS, former President and Vice-President of the AAS, respectively, as well as founders and editors Adorno Studies since its inception) stepped down from the journal in 2021. We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to both of them for their long and dedicated service and their extraordinary commitment to the AAS. Since then, a new editorial team has formed (Samir Gandesha, Johan Hartle, Antonia Hofstätter, Han-Gyeol Lie and Stefano Marino) along with a new editorial board. The new editors have been very busy preparing the relaunch of Adorno Studies at Mimesis Press. Antonia Hofstätter, who was present at the meeting, relayed some very exciting news (and shared some visuals!) about the next issue. Stay tuned! The event will be publicized on this blog.

Second, the AAS has been working on the transfer of this blog to a new server at UC Berkeley (thanks to Robert Kaufmann, Debarati Sanyal and Dan Blanton). The details should be announced soon. In the meantime, if you wish to be added on the mailing list of this blog, please contact Pierre-François Noppen directly (pf.noppen@usask.ca).

Third, we have announced that our executive is to be renewed at our 2024 meeting. It is worth noting that, on the model we agreed upon in 2012 at our first meeting (Johns Hopkins University), members of our executive serve three-year terms. While the pandemic upset our plans for a renewal of the executive, we are pleased to return to our pre-pandemic model with three-year commitments.

Fourth, we discussed a number of options for next year’s meeting (2024). The location will be announced by the end of the summer on this blog. We are also thrilled to announce that Peter E. Gordon has very graciously agreed to host our 2025 meeting at Harvard University.

All of this bodes very well for the future of the AAS!

Here’s the complete schedule of this year’s meeting.

And here are some pictures that were shared with us:

AAS 2023 Meeting Final Program

04 Thursday May 2023

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Association for Adorno Studies 9th Annual conference, University of Sussex

Supported by the Mind Association, the Aristotelian Society of Great Britian and School of Media Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex

Thursday May 4th

Welcome: Drinks at the Walrus Pub, for those who want them 8pm onwards. 10 Ship St, Brighton, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN1 1AD

You are also invited to a launch event for philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark’s latest book ‘The Experience Machine’: The Experience Machine: How our Minds Predict and Shape Reality. Waterstones Bookshop 71-74 North Street

 7-9 pm BST

A grand new vision in cognitive science explains how our minds build our worlds. Hear a leading philosopher of mind speak on the extraordinary explanatory power of the “predictive brain” for our lives, mental health and society. The event series is supported in part by the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and all events are open to the public. Attendance is free, but registration is required in advance. Those who think that they might attend are encouraged to register for a (free) e-ticket right away in order to have accurate attendance numbers.

AAS Conference Programme

Friday 5 May – Leonardo Hotel, Brighton Station 

8.45 Coffee and Tea, Meeting Room, Leonardo Hotel, Brighton Station

9.00 Opening Address: Surti Singh (Villanova)

9.20-11.00 

Chair: Gordon Finlayson (Sussex)

Jacob Bard-Rosenberg (Cambridge) ‘Der böse Kamerad’/‘Der gute Kamerad’ Minima Moralia

Bruno Carvalho (São Paulo): Suffering and pessimism, on the actuality of Adorno’s critical project

11.00-11.20 Coffee and Tea 

11.20-1.00 

Chair: Surti Singh (Villanova)

Emily Shyr (Duke): Revealing a Schubertian Constellation: Re-reading Adorno’s ‘Schubert’ through Benjamin

Fumi Okiji (Berkeley): Aesthetic form in the new thing // Aesthetic sociality of musique informelle

1.00-2.10 – Lunch

2.10-3.50 

Chair: Pierre-François Noppen (Saskatchewan)

Kathy Kiloh (OCAD): Involvement and Animal Desire 

Adriano Lotito (Sussex): The cage of social labour and the (Im)possibilities of emancipation

3.50-4.10 Break

4.10-5.50

Chair: Iain MacDonald (Montréal)

Lydia Goehr (Columbia): ‘Mitigating expressions and euphemistic circumlocutions’: Adorno on work, analysis, and critique

Antonia Hofstätter (Warwick): ‘Closer to the Truth? Adorno’s Kinderbilder‘.

Drinks and Conference Meal tbc 

Saturday 6 May -Leonardo Hotel, Brighton Waterfront 

8.45 Coffee and Tea Reception, Leonardo Hotel, Brighton Waterfront 

9.20-11.00 

Chair: Marina Lademacher (Sussex)

Lars Rensmann (Passau): How Nature Matters: Environmentalism after Arendt and Adorno 

Toby Lovat (Brighton): Immanent Critique and a Rational Life

11.00-11.30 Coffee and Tea 

11.30-1.10 

Chair: Jessica Daboin (Paris-1 Sorbonne)

Salima Naït Ahmed (Sorbonne): Adorno and Sartre on Anti-Semitism: A Comparison of Frankfurt School and Existentialist Approaches to Racialization

Estelle Ferrarese (Amiens): Re-actualizing Adorno’s theory of exchange. A critique of ethical consumption

1.10-2.10 Lunch and Business Meeting Surti Singh (President) and Pierre-Francois Noppen (Vice-President)

2.10-4.30 

Panel discussion on Iain Macdonald’s What would be different? Figures of Possibility in Adorno” 

Taylor Carman (Barnard – Columbia)

Peter E Gordon (Harvard)

Nick Walker (Cambridge)

Iain Macdonald (Montréal)

4.30 Closing Remarks

AAS 2023 Meeting @ U. Sussex May 5-6

25 Saturday Mar 2023

Posted by in Association for Adorno Studies, Conference, Theodor W. Adorno

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The 9th Annual conference of the Association for Adorno Studies:

May 5th – 6th 2023 in Brighton, UK.

Host: Centre for Social and Political Thought, at the University of Sussex.

Funding: the Mind Association, The Aristotelian Society of GB, and the School of Media Arts and Humanities at the University of Sussex.

We have an event brite invitation for the first 50 places.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-association-for-adorno-studies-9th-annual-conference-tickets-578956383127

Venues:

Friday 5th of May, Leonardo Hotel Brighton. 101 Stroudley Road, Brighton, BN1 4DJ, GB Telephone: +44(0) 1273 862 121.

Email: brightonconference@leonardohotels.com

This hotel is right by Brighton Railway Station.

Saturday 6th of May, Leonardo Hotel, Brighton Waterfront. Kings Road

Brighton, BN1 2GS, GB Telephone: +44(0) 1273 206 700.

Email: brightonwaterfrontconference@leonardohotels.com

This hotel is on the Seafront.

Though Brighton has a lot of other hotels, the conference takes place during the Brighton Festival so rooms will be at a premium and will book up early. Here are some other good hotels we recommend.

Artist Residence Hotel (Regency Square – Central Brighton)

Hotel du Vin (Close to Brighton Sea front)

Harbour Hotel (Brighton Seafront. There is no harbour)

Drakes Hotel (boutique Hotel – Kemp Town)

Blanch House (boutique Hotel – Kemp Town)

PROGRAMME

Thursday May 4th 7.30 p.m. Wine Reception and Book Launch Leonardo Hotel Waterfront, Brighton

Friday 5th May – Leonardo Hotel, Brighton Station

8.45 coffee and tea

Meeting Room

9.20-11.00

Lydia Goehr, Adorno on work, analysis, and critique

Antonia Hoffstätter, Adorno and Gerhard Richter’s Birkenau paintings.

11.00-11.30 coffee and tea

11.30-1.10

Andrew Bowie            Adorno on Music

Fumi Okiji.                 Adorno on Music

1.10-2.30 – lunch – Business Meeting

2.30-4.10

Emily Shyr: “Revealing a Schubertian Constellation: Re-reading Adorno’s ‘Schubert’ through Benjamin”

Roman Thomassen: “Black Metal as Aestheticizing of the Present”

410-4.30

4.30-6.10

Bruno Carvalho. Adorno on Suffering

Adriano Lotito: Adorno on Work

Drinks and Conference Meal tbc

8.45 Coffee reception, Leonardo Hotel, Brighton Waterfront

9.20-11.00

Lars Rensmann “How Nature Matters: Environmentalism after Arendt and Adorno”

Kathy Kiloh “Involvement and Animal Desire”

11.00-11.30 Coffee and Tea

11..30-1.10

Salima Nait Ahmed: “Adorno and Sartre on Anti-Semitism: A Comparison of Frankfurt School and Existentialist Approaches to Racialization”

Estelle Ferrarese TBC

1.10-2.30. Lunch

2.30-4.30

Panel discussion on Iain Macdonald’s What would be different? Figures of Possibility in Adorno”

Taylor Carmen

Peter E Gordon

Nick Walker

Iain Macdonald

Call for Papers: Adorno & Poetry

06 Monday Feb 2023

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Henry Pickford (Duke) has forwarded the following call for papers, which I am happy to post here:

Conference: Adorno & Poetry

Organizers: Lukas Hoffman, Carolina-Duke Program in German Studies; George Kovalenko, University of Denver

We invite submissions for a proposed panel on Adorno and Poetry at the 2023 German Studies Association conference, to be held in Montreal, October 5-8. In the wake of many contemporary theorists (such as Jacques Rancière, Alan Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, or Judith Butler) pointing to poetic form as a place of political praxis—of community formation—this panel seeks to explore the lyric theory of Theodor W. Adorno, whose 1951 “On Lyric Poetry and Society” sparked an international conversation about the potential political character of poetic production. 

Paper topics may include Adorno’s own theory of the lyric, Adornian inflections or interventions in a range of lyric projects, critiques or explications of Adorno’s poetics, Adorno’s posthumous Aesthetic Theory and the lyric, transnational and transhistorical complications to the Adornian lyric, Adorno and the contemporary lyric, and poetry after Auschwitz. Interested parties should send an abstract in English or German of no more than 500 words along with a brief bio to george.kovalenko@du.edu by February 15th. Submissions in German are especially welcome.

Conference on Minima Moralia, Nov. 11-13

07 Sunday Nov 2021

Posted by in Conference, Critical Theory, Frankfurt School, Theodor W. Adorno

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Yasmin Afshar has written to let us know about an upcoming conference to mark the 70th anniversary of the publication of Minima Moralia. The conference will be held over three days (Nov. 11-13, 2021) in three languages (French, German, English) at the Centre Marc Bloch of the HU Berlin.

Here’s the link for the complete program.

Here’s the flyer.

Here’s an overview:

“Wer sagt, er sei glücklich, lügt” Kritische Theorie in Bruchstücken: 70 Jahre Minima Moralia

11. November | 09:00

Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin 11.-13.11. 2021

Organisation: Susanna Zellini, Pierre Buhlmann, Philipp Nolz, Tobias Nikolaus Klass

Verpflichtende Anmeldung / inscription obligatoire / obligatory registration:
https://forms.gle/jDcvLfKznZHzh4789

Einleitung
Die Minima Moralia ist sicherlich eines der wichtigsten Werke der Kritischen Theorie und gleichzeitig die literarisch anspruchsvollste Schrift Theodor W. Adornos. In dieser Doppelgestalt mag der Grund zu finden sein, dass die Singularität und Eigenständigkeit der Minima Moralia in der Forschung bis heute weitgehend unbeachtet geblieben ist. Wir nehmen daher den 70. Jahrestag der Veröffentlichung der Minima Moralia (1951-2021) zum Anlass, um uns im Rahmen einer  Tagung von 11. bis 13. November am Centre Marc Bloch Berlin (Kooperationspartner der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal) diesem Buch zu widmen. Dabei wollen wir über die traditionellen interpretativen und methodologischen Unterscheidungen hinausgehen, und im Dialog zwischen Philosophie und Literaturwissenschaften eine gemeinsame und eigenständige  Lektüre des Werks vorschlagen.

Allgemeine Beschreibung
Es war vielleicht bisher noch zu früh, um die Wirkung und Tragweite der Minima Moralia zu bewerten. Dennoch lässt sich ein Sachverhalt deutlich herausheben: die Philosophie hat vor der Minima Moralia versagt. Da die Minima Moralia als „zu literarisch“ und zu „persönlich“ angesehen wurde, um Gegenstand einer ernsthaften philosophischen Analyse zu sein, ist sie bis heute Grundlage weniger Studien, von denen keine eine umfassende und historisch fundierte Lektüre des Werkes vorschlägt, die dem genuin philosophischen Gehalt der Schrift Rechnung trüge. Das hat die besonders verbreitete Gewohnheit begünstigt, das Werk lediglich als ein Arsenal beliebig verfügbarer Aphorismen zu betrachten, um die Interpretation anderer ,philosophischerer‘ Texte oder anderer Reflexionsbereiche in Adornos Werk zu untermauern. Breiter und trotzdem ebenso problematisch war die Rezeption in der Literaturwissenschaft: Da sie die Minima Moralia gewöhnlich in die deutsche aphoristische Tradition (von Lichtenberg über Nietzsche bis Benjamin) stellt, richtet sie die Analyse vor allem nach einer eher stilistisch-formalen als inhaltlichen Forschung, mit dem Risiko, den historischen Kontext und das theoretische Projekt, innerhalb dessen das Werk entstand, aus den Augen zu verlieren.
Es geht uns darum, die verschiedenen Disziplinen zusammenwirken zu lassen, um eine Interpretation vorzuschlagen, die die Singularität des Werks in ihr Zentrum rückt, seine Genese, die Verflechtung der Quellen und Projekte, in denen es Gestalt annimmt (Dialektik der Aufklärung, Philosophie der neuen Musik…), sowie die begriffliche Entwicklung seiner Terminologie berücksichtigt. Dadurch aber erweist sich die Minima Moralia als „ideales Laboratorium“ der Philosophie Adornos der 1940er Jahre: indem es die Ideen und Projekte auf originelle Weise assimiliert und transformiert, die im Umfeld der Epoche zirkulieren, verwirklicht es auf möglichst vollständige Weise die Verbindungen und Korrespondenzen zwischen Ästhetik, Ethik, Erkenntnis, Psychologie und Sozialkritik, die den hybriden Charakter des philosophischen Projekts Adornos bestimmen. Wie lassen sich aber die Texte der Minima Moralia ineinander und zueinander verstehen? Wie erlauben sie es, der philosophischen Gehalte gewahr zu werden, die in Form und Stil zum Ausdruck kommen? Ist es trotz der Gebrochenheit der Bausteine möglich, eine kritische Theorie in ihnen zu erkennen? Welche Begriffe der Theorie lassen sich aus ihnen noch gewinnen?

Kontakt
europe.philosophique@gmail.com

Kontakt

Yasmin Afshar
yasmin.afshar  ( at )  cmb.hu-berlin.de

New Book: Negative Dialectics and Event

28 Thursday Oct 2021

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Vangelis Giannakakis wrote to us about his new book, which might be of interest to our readers. His book is entitled Negative Dialectics and Event: Non-Identity, Event and the Historical Adequacy of Consciousness. It is published at Lexington Books with a foreword by Brian O’Connor.

Here’s the editor’s blurb:

“History is replete with false and unfulfilled promises, as well as singular acts of courage, resilience, and ingenuity. These episodes have led to significant changes in the way people think and act in the world or have set the stage for such transformations in the form of rational expectations in theory and the hopeful anticipations of dialectical imagination.

Negative Dialectics and Event: Nonidentity, Culture, and the Historical Adequacy of Consciousness revisits some of Theodor W. Adorno’s most influential writings and theoretical interventions to argue not only that his philosophy is uniquely suited to bring such events into sharp relief and reflect on their entailments but also that an effective historical consciousness today would be a consciousness awake to the events that interpellate and shape it into existence.

More broadly, Vangelis Giannakakis presents a compelling argument in support of the view that the critical theory developed by the first generation of the Frankfurt School still has much to offer in terms of both cultivating insights into contemporary human experience and building resistance against states of affairs that impede human flourishing and happiness.”

The book can be purchased on the publisher’s site – discount code for a 30% off: LEX30AUTH21 (valid until 12/31/2021).

New Book: Théorie critique de la propagande

24 Thursday Jun 2021

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Here’s some belated promotion for a collection that Gérard Raulet and myself edited. The collection is entitled Théorie critique de la propagande (Critical Theory of Propaganda, Éditions la Maison des sciences de l’homme). It came out late in the fall and it could be of interest to some of our readers.

Here’s a link to the publisher’s page and to the OpenEdition platform where the individual contributions can be found.

I translate the short blurb: 

The studies collected in this volume echo the rediscovery of Siegfried Kracauer’s manuscript entitled Totalitarian Propaganda (Totalitäre Propaganda, 1937-1938). Their aim is both exegetical and political. On the one side, they shed light on an important moment of the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory, namely the debate on mass culture and propaganda that animated the German exiles in the 1930s and 1940s. On the other, they articulate what motivated these thinkers in order to elaborate a critical theory of propaganda that would live up to the challenges of the present. The topics they debated, such as the authoritarian excesses of liberalism, the manipulation of the masses and the media construction of the real, remain very actual. 

Contributions: 

Introduction, by Pierre-François Noppen and Gérard Raulet

Patrick Vassort, L’art politique examiné par la Théorie critique

Gérard Raulet, La théorie de la propagande dans son contexte: les réflexions de la Théorie critique sur le fascisme pendant l’exil

Olivier Agard, Convergences et divergences avec l’Institut für Sozialforschung dans La propagande totalitaire de Siegfried Kracauer (1937-1938)

Hans J. Lind, A cacophony of critical voices? Excavating the palimpsest of Siegfried Kracauer’s 1937-1938 study on fascist propaganda

Stephanie Baumann, Des nouvelles masse à l’ornement totalitaire: Siegfried Kracauer sur la propagande nazie

Vladimir Safatle, The fascist laugh: propaganda and cynical rationality in Adorno

Agnès Grivaux, Manipulation des masses et propagande fasciste chez Horkheimer et Adorno: esquisse d’une théorie psychanalytique du jugement

Lucien Pelletier, Militantisme, propagande et métaphysique: pour introduire à la “Critique de la propagande” d’Ernst Bloch

Ernst Bloch, Critique de la propagande

Pierre Arnoux, Le pouvoir de la monotonie: Adorno et l’analyse empirique de la culture de masse

William Ross, Current of Music: de la radio courante vers la possibilité qui court dans la radio

Pierre-François Noppen, Le langage des images: schématisme, cinéma et régression chez Adorno

Léa Barbisan, L’”inconscient optique”: plongée dans les “profondeurs de la mentalité collective”

John Abromeit, Siegfried Kracauer and the early Frankfurt school’s analysis of fascism as right-wing populism

Student-Led Reading Group on Adorno

03 Thursday Jun 2021

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Clint Montgomery, who just completed an M.A. at the University of Leipzig, wrote to share the news of summer reading group on Adorno.

Here’s the detail with the link to the reading Zoom meeting:

The Platypus Affiliated Society is hosting an 8 week student-led reading group on Theodor W. Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, the first session of which is happening this Wednesday, June 9th at 7 PM Central Time. We will meet every Wednesday at 7 PM Central for 8 weeks.

The recurring Zoom link is here:
https://zoom.us/j/95323669338

The reading schedule and readings can be found here: https://platypus1917.org/2021/05/08/summer-2021-adornos-negative-dialectics/
The dates in the reading schedule are different, though the chronological order is correct. We meet on Wednesdays at 7pm, same link as above. There are also other reading groups happening if that time does not work. 
All are welcome, especially those who are new to Adorno.