The full schedule for our next meeting is available here.
24 Wednesday Jan 2024
The full schedule for our next meeting is available here.
19 Tuesday Sep 2023
Posted Critical Theory, Publications, Theodor W. Adorno
inEstelle 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.”
06 Thursday Jul 2023
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
12 Monday Jun 2023
Tags
Adorno Studies, Adriano Lotito, Annual Meeting, Antonia Hofstätter, Bruno Carvalho, Centre for Social and Political Thought, Emily Shyr, Estelle Ferrarese, Fumi Okiji, Gordon Finlayson, Han-Gyeol Lie, Iain Macdonald, Jacob Bard-Rosenberg, Jessica Daboin, Kathy Kiloh, Lars Rensmann, Lydia Goehr, Marina Lademacher, Nick Walker, Peter E. Gordon, Pierre-François Noppen, Salima Naït Ahmed, Surti Singh, Taylor Carman, Theodor W. Adorno, Toby Lovat, University of Sussex
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:
15 Thursday Apr 2021
Estelle Ferrarese has informed us that her recent book on Adorno and care had been published in English translation (translator: Steven Corcoran) in January by Edinburgh University Press. The complete English title of her book is: The Fragility of Concern for Others: Adorno and the Ethics of Care (2021).
Here’s the flyer.
Here’s the description from the publisher’s page:
Estelle Ferrarese, one of the leading figures of the contemporary French reception of Critical Theory, offers a renewal of the thinking of Theodor W. Adorno. Ferrarese develops our thinking about the social conditions of caring for others, while arguing for an understanding of morality that is materialist and political – always-already political.
Taking the social philosopher Adorno as a point of departure, Ferrarese questions this social philosophy by submitting it to ideas deriving from theories of care. She thinks through the mechanisms of the social fragility of caring for others, the moral gesture it enjoins, as well as its political stakes.
In the end, Ferrarese shows that the capitalist form of life, strained by a generalised indifference, produces a compartmentalised attention to others, one limited to very particular tasks and domains and attributed to women.
03 Tuesday Apr 2018
Posted Critical Theory, Publications, Theodor W. Adorno, Uncategorized
inEstelle Ferrarese wrote to let us know that her new book is coming out in France, which might be of interest to the readers of this blog. Estelle’s book proposes a renewal of Critical Theory through feminism. The book examines Adorno’s social philosophy and mobilizes insights drawn from the ethics of care to articulate the question of the social fragility of our concern for others. The book expands on some of the insights she presented at our last meeting at Duke (2017).
The full title is:
La fragilité du souci des autres: Adorno et le care
(The Fragility of Concern for Others: Adorno and Care)