The full schedule for our next meeting is available here.
10th AAS Meeting – Schedule
24 Wednesday Jan 2024
Category Archives: Conference
Conference: “Flaschenpost: Critical Theory at 100” @ Harvard U, Oct. 6-7, 2023
11 Monday Sep 2023
Posted in Conference
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.
2024 Meeting of the AAS
06 Thursday Jul 2023
Posted in Association for Adorno Studies, Conference
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
AAS 2023 Meeting @ U. Sussex May 5-6
25 Saturday Mar 2023
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.
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
Posted in Conference, Critical Theory, Frankfurt School, Theodor W. Adorno
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.
Conference on Minima Moralia, Nov. 11-13
07 Sunday Nov 2021
Posted in Conference, Critical Theory, Frankfurt School, Theodor W. Adorno
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
German/French Philosophy Conference: Interdisciplinarity and Critical Theory, May 25-26th (online)
20 Thursday May 2021
Posted in Conference, Critical Theory, Uncategorized
Aurélia Peyrical has written to us about a two-day German-French philosophy conference she is co-organizing with Lea Gekle.
Here’s a PDF of the program. Time zone: CEST
And here’s the detail:
To register, email Lea Gekle (lea.gekle@u-picardie.fr). A summary of each presentation (1 page) will be available this week-end in German and French for those who register. It will also be possible to take part in the discussion in English, as well as in German and French. Two extraordinary translators will help us manage to ensure that everyone feels at ease to participate.
English: This two-day conference intends to throw light upon doctoral students / post-doc student’s current research conducted in Germany and France, working in the area of German Critical Theory (first and second generation) from a philosophical and also interdisciplinary point of view. “Interdisciplinarity” has now become somewhat of a buzzword in Europe. On the face of it, the term mostly refers to a certain idea of how disciplines are supposed to come to work with one another. But, in fact, the term has for some time now been quite often used as a part of the neoliberal narrative that accompanies the Bologna Process’s standardization and re-structuring of European university systems. Accumulating knowledge is, however, only one way of thinking about interdisciplinary. Disciplines are themselves complex bodies of knowledge that cannot simply be “linked” to others from the outside. Hence our question: what kind of interdisciplinarity does Critical Theory need in order to be able to formulate at the same time a contemporary critical theory of society ?
French: Ces deux journées d’étude visent à mettre en lumière les travaux en cours de doctorant-e-s et jeunes docteur-e-s allemand-e-s et français-e-s travaillant sur la théorie critique d’un point de vue philosophique mais dans une perspective interdisciplinaire. L’interdisciplinarité est, désormais, sur toutes les lèvres. Mais elle est la plupart du temps évoquée dans un cadre particulier qui ne dit pas son nom : celui du processus de Bologne et de la restructuration néolibérale des universités européennes. Contre ce type d’interdisciplinarité qui se pense en tant qu’accumulation de différents savoirs sans se soucier de la manière de les articuler, nous nous posons la question suivante : comment penser aujourd’hui, grâce à la Théorie Critique, une interdisciplinarité et une pluridisciplinarité qui ne soit pas un flatus vocis formaliste, mais dont l’approche inter- et pluri-disciplinaire permet l’esquisse d’une théorie sociale contemporaine véritablement critique ?
PANEL DISCUSSION: “The Politics of Critical Theory”
11 Tuesday May 2021
Posted in Conference, Critical Theory, Links of Interest
Divya Menon (divya_menon@emerson.edu) wrote to inform us that she is organizing a panel discussion on Zoom that could be of interest to readers of this blog. The detail is below.
On Saturday, May 15th at 11 AM Eastern Time, the Cambridge (i.e. Harvard/MIT) chapter of the Platypus Affiliated Society is hosting an online panel discussion on “The Politics of Critical Theory”.
Zoom link here: https://zoom.us/j/91211815231
Back in the autumn of 2010, the New Left Review published a translated conversation between the critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer causing more than a few murmurs and gasps. In the course of their conversation, Adorno comments that he had always wanted to “develop a theory that remains faithful to Marx, Engels and Lenin, while keeping up with culture at its most advanced.” Adorno, it seems, was a Leninist. As surprising as this evidence might have been to some, is it not more shocking that Adorno’s politics, and the politics of Critical Theory, have remained taboo for so long? Was it really necessary to wait until Adorno and Horkheimer admitted their politics in print to understand that their primary preoccupation was with maintaining Marxism’s relation to bourgeois critical philosophy (Kant and Hegel)? This panel proposes to state the question as directly as possible and to simply ask: How did the practice and theory of Marxism, from Marx to Lenin, make possible and necessary the politics of Critical Theory?
Panelists:
Paul Breines (Professor Emeritus of History at Boston College)
Tom Canel (SHARE/AFSCME, Democratic Socialists of America)
Paul Demarty (Communist Party of Great Britain)
Alex Steinberg (Marxist Education Project)
Facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/3946296458740686
Annual Meeting Postponed until 2022
15 Thursday Apr 2021
Posted in Association for Adorno Studies, Conference
Tags
The annual meeting of the Association for Adorno Studies is postponed until the end of May 2022.
The Adorno and Identity Seminars
14 Thursday Jan 2021
Jon Catlin, Fumi Okiji, and Eric Oberle have written to us asking us to post about a series of seminars they will be curating around Adorno and Identity. More details are below:
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/689345985085105
Negative dialectics, the critical theorist Theodor Adorno wrote, “is suspicious of all identity.” The concept of identity and its negations—nonidentity and negative identity—are woven throughout Adorno’s wide-ranging corpus. This interdisciplinary series of virtual seminars on “Adorno and Identity,” convened by Jonathon Catlin (Princeton), Eric Oberle (Arizona State), and Fumi Okiji (Berkeley), revisits Adorno’s thought at a moment in which political, cultural, legal, and psychological notions of identity have expanded relevance and vexed public meaning. Across these sessions, scholars from diverse fields will return to Adorno’s theoretical framework in order to collectively develop more robust notions of identity, nonidentity, and negative identity, and to advance critical theory by connecting Adorno’s work to broader conversations about identity in adjacent fields, including the study of race, gender, sexuality, and technology.
This series of virtual seminars will meet on Zoom every two weeks over the course of the spring 2021 semester, beginning Friday, Jan. 29 (1–3pm Eastern US time). Each session will consist of two parts: three presentations of approximately 15 minutes each, followed by an hour of discussion amongst the participants and a public audience. On our Facebook event page you will find our current schedule. Please email jonathon.catlin@gmail.com to be kept up to date with sessions through our email list. A Zoom link and outlines of the presentations will be provided on our website prior to the first session.
Current schedule:
Introduction to Adorno and Identity: Adorno, Du Bois, and negative identity (Jan. 29, 2021, 1–3pm EST)
Jonathon Catlin, Eric Oberle, and Fumi Okiji
Rethinking Adorno and race, part 1: Revisiting Du Bois and critical race theory (Feb. 12)
Corey D. B. Walker – “The Wound of Blackness: Thinking Adorno and the Limits of Critical Theory”
Oshrat Silberbusch – “‘The World Thus Darkly Through the Veil’: Reflections on Identity (Thinking) with Du Bois and Adorno”
Charlotte Baumann – Adorno, Suffering & Critical Race Theory: Or, The Non-identical & the System
Rethinking Adorno and Race, part 2: Freedom through fugitivity and negation (Feb. 26)
Henrike Kohpeiß – “Identity Produced by Negation: Freedom after Theodor Adorno and Saidiya Hartman”
Romy Opperman – “Critical Black Feminist Theory”
Anders Bartonek – “Marronage and Non-identity”
Rethinking Adorno and race, part 3: Fanon, racisms, and the question of praxis (March 12)
Martin Shuster – “Adorno and Fanon on Antisemitism”Sid Simpson and Ryan Curnow – “Stripping Away the Masks of Identity: Adorno and Fanon’s Negative Dialectics”
Adorno and the politics of non-identity (March 26)
Frank Müller – “Reflections on the Politics of Nonidentity”
Ariane Mintz – “Unveiling the ‘Individualistic Veil’: On Narcissistic Reactions to Capitalist Mutilations”
Claudia Leeb – “The Feminist Subject-in-Outline’s Fight against the Extremist Right”
Adorno and queer dis/identification (April 9)
Asaf Angermann – “Queer Utopia and the Incommensurable: Adorno after Muñoz”
Kyle Kaplan – “Dear Adorno: On the Limits of Personal and Practical Advice”
Nicole Yokum – “The Politics of Avoidance: From Adornian Coldness to Edelmanian Antisociality”
Identity thinking, data, and the politics of algorithmic personalization (April 23)
Moira Weigel – An Adornian critique of algorithmic identity, machine learning, and personalization
Jerome Clarke – “Battle of Negroes in a Black Box: Nonidentity and Race Data”
Samir Gandesha – “Adorno’s Critique of Identity Thinking: Between the Abstract and Concrete”