Contributors will revisit Adorno’s writings on race, fascism, antisemitism, gender, and sexuality alongside his conception of subjectivity as a dialectic of identity and non-identity in his works of philosophy and writings on art, literature, and music. In particular, this issue offers an opportunity to restage missed encounters between Adorno and Black thought and music. Noting that “what [Adorno] fails to realize is that jazz emerges from a subject constituted by the holding of contradictory positions”—a subject that is not self-identical—Okiji’s work considers jazz as a form of critical self-reflection within Black life that “creates an unstable, ever constellating gathering of difference” and thereby approaches the “union of differentiation” and “difference without fear” that Adorno called for. Oberle’s study of “negative identity” highlights the contact Adorno made in exile with American sociology and racial violence and explores resonances with the rich legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois and his theorization of race as a “wound in the fabric of universality.” Silberbusch’s philosophical study recenters the nonidentical as a powerful tool for making visible and resisting social suffering.

Contributors are invited to engage with these projects and expand upon Adorno’s conception of dialectics as “nonidentity through identity,” broadly and imaginatively conceived, and especially to consider underexplored connections between Adorno’s work and ethnic and gender studies.

The editors of Adorno Studies have expressed their enthusiasm for this project, and the journal’s electronic format will allow the inclusion of audio-visual material such as music.

Planned contributors, expanding on a previous workshop that took place at the German Studies Association annual conference in 2019 include: Asaf Angermann, Jonathon Catlin, Eric Oberle, Fumi Okiji, Oshrat Silberbusch, Martin Shuster, Sebastian Truskolaski, and Moira Weigel.

Submission guidelines: Please submit abstracts of approximately 500 words and a short biographical note to Jonathon Catlin at jcatlin@princeton.edu by Oct. 12, 2020. A virtual workshop for participants to exchange drafts and a virtual public roundtable event for broader discussion on the topic are planned for December 2020 or January 2021 at a date suitable for all invited participants.