Category Archives: Theodor W. Adorno

New translation of Adorno: Orpheus in the Underworld

18 Monday Mar 2024

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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

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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

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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.”

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!

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

Symposium on Adorno’s “Sexual Taboos and Law Today”– Sixty Years On, Feb. 25

13 Monday Feb 2023

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Antonia Hofstätter has written to us to let us know about an upcoming symposium on ‘Adorno’s “Sexual Taboos and Law Today”– Sixty Years On’, which will be held at the University of Warwick and on Zoom on February 25.

Symposium on Adorno’s ‘Sexual Taboos and Law Today’ – Sixty Years On  

Saturday, 25 February 2023, University of Warwick, UK  

The event will also be streamed online. Registration required. 

Webpage: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/news/conference/adorno/

‘It’s a nice bit of sexual utopia not to be yourself. […] What is merely identical with itself is without happiness.’ 

Programme: 

10.00–10.30 Registration and coffee  

10.30–10.45 Introduction by the organisers (Antonia Hofstätter & Simon Gansinger) 

10.45–12.15 Panel 1: Sex and Taboo   

  • Christine Kirchhoff (International Psychoanalytic University, Berlin): Sexual Taboos and Law Today? Reflections from the Perspective of Psychoanalysis  
  • Julia König (University of Mainz): Reflections on the ‘Minors-Complex’ in Adorno’s ‘Sexual Taboos and Law Today’ and in Current Moral Panics  

12.15–13.30 Lunch   

13.30–15.00 Panel 2: Sex and Society  

  • Marcel Stoetzler (Bangor University): Law, Lust, and Otherness in the Society of Total Domination: On Adorno’s Essay ‘Sexual Taboos and Law Today’  
  • Craig Reeves (Birkbeck): Persecution, Punishment, and the Potential for Freedom: Reactualising Adorno’s Critical Moral Psychology  

15.00–15.15 Coffee  

15.15–16.45 Panel 3: Sex and Crime   

  • Iris Dankemeyer (University of Art and Design, Halle): Presumption of Innocence: On the Topicality of Adorno’s Lines of Enquiry in ‘Sexual Taboos and Law Today’
  • Nicola Lacey (LSE): A Feminist Criminal Lawyer’s Retrospective on Adorno’s Text  

16.45–17.00 Coffee  

17.00–18.00 Roundtable with all speakers  

19.00–22.00 Dinner  

Description:

First published in 1963, Theodor W. Adorno’s essay ‘Sexual Taboos and Law Today’ responded to changing attitudes to love and desire during a period of sexual liberation. Critiquing repressive bourgeois morality and progressive sexual values alike, ‘Sexual Taboos and Law Today’ suggests that the utopian potential of intimacy is inseparable from the challenges sexuality poses to self and society. The essay’s most famous line – ‘It is a nice bit of sexual utopia not to be yourself’ – already locates the promise of sexuality in the momentary dissolution of identity. It meets with Adorno’s claim that without its anarchical and transgressive aspects sexuality becomes neutralised and inert. Yet, these aspects evoke society’s contempt: ‘What is specifically sexual is eo ipso forbidden,’ Adorno writes.  

‘Sexual Taboos and Law Today’ sheds light on the dynamics of desire and disdain, freedom and punishment, losing oneself and finding oneself that characterise the ‘brittle integration’ of sexuality into modern society. Ultimately, these dynamics destabilise the sphere of law and morality, and problematise modern conceptions of subjectivity and identity.  

Today, in times of #MeToo, identity politics, and heightened public concern for gender equality and transgender rights, ‘Sexual Taboos and Law Today’ invites renewed scrutiny. This one-day symposium explores the tensions that Adorno’s text brings to the fore in the sphere of legal theory, social critique, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. Making these tensions fruitful for the present moment is the overarching aim of this event.  

This event has been organised with the generous support of the Department of Philosophy and the Humanities Research Centre at the University of Warwick, the Aristotelian Society, the Society for Applied Philosophy, and the British Society for the History of Philosophy.

Details:

Please follow this link to register for the event (attendance in person or via Zoom):

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/485669930837

Please note that participants intending to attend the event in person will be required to leave a £5 deposit when registering. £4.09 of your deposit will be returned to you when you attend the event in person (an administrative fee of £0.91 will be kept by Eventbrite).     

Lunch, coffee, and snacks will be provided. Please indicate on the registration form whether you would like to attend the conference dinner at your own expense.  

If you have any questions about the event, please contact the organisers at antonia.hofstatter@warwick.ac.uk or simon.gansinger@warwick.ac.uk.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/485669930837

Please note that participants intending to attend the event in person will be required to leave a £5 deposit when registering. £4.09 of your deposit will be returned to you when you attend the event in person (an administrative fee of £0.91 will be kept by Eventbrite).

Lunch, coffee, and snacks will be provided. Please indicate on the registration form whether you would like to attend the conference dinner at your own expense.

If you have any questions about the event, please contact the organisers at antonia.hofstatter@warwick.ac.uk or simon.gansinger@warwick.ac.uk.

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

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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