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

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: The “Aging” of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. Fifty Years Later

13 Monday Sep 2021

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Samir Gandesha, Johan H. Hartle and Stefano Marino have published a new edited volume, The “Aging” of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. Fifty Years Later, with Mimesis International.

If 2019 was an “Adornian year” because of the 50th anniversary of the untimely death of Theodor W. Adorno in August 1969, also 2020 has been an “Adornian year” because of the 50th anniversary of the posthumous publication of Adorno’s great but unfinished masterpiece Aesthetic Theory, first published in 1970. Adorno’s intellectual legacy is still alive today and indeed important for the conceptual tools as it still provides to develop a critical, active and negative (instead than acritical, passive and affirmative) relationship with the real. In the vast and complex corpus of Adorno’s entire philosophical oeuvre, his aesthetic theory deserves an especially close and renewed attention today for the variety of intellectual provocations that are still richly offered to us in order to critically understand our age.

Find out more about the book here: http://mimesisinternational.com/the-aging-of-adornos…/

New Books from Polity Press

13 Monday Sep 2021

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Madeline Sharaga has written to us on behalf of Polity Press about two new titles that may be of interest to members of the Association


  • Correspondence, 1939 – 1969     by Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem: This new volume brings together the long-running correspondence between two towering figures of German-Jewish intellectual culture, covering a wide range of their discussions on philosophy, religion, history, politics, literature, and the arts.
  • The New Music: Kranichstein Lectures by Theodor W. Adorno: Based on lectures that Adorno delivered in Darmstadt in the 1950s and 1960s, this volume illuminates Adorno’s thoughts on the relation between traditional and avant-garde as well as the problems of composition in contemporary music.

Polity Press is also offering a discount :

To get 20% off these titles, go to www.politybooks.com and use code ADR21 at checkout.

Offer expires 31 October 2021.

New Book: Adorno, Politics, and the Aesthetic Animal

13 Monday Sep 2021

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Caleb J. Basnett has published a new book: Adorno, Politics, and the Aesthetic Animal with the University of Toronto Press.

Here is the blurb from the publisher’s website:

Built upon the principle that divides and elevates humans above other animals, humanism is the cornerstone of a worldview that sanctifies inequality and threatens all animal life. Adorno, Politics, and the Aesthetic Animal analyses this state of affairs and suggests an alternative – a way for humanity to make itself into a new kind of animal.

Theodor W. Adorno has been accused of leading critical theory into a blind alley, divorced from practical social and political concerns. In Adorno, Politics, and the Aesthetic Animal, Caleb J. Basnett argues that by placing the problem of the human/animal distinction at the centre of Adorno’s thought, we discover a new Adorno, one whose critique of domination is in dialogue with classic concerns of political thought forged by Aristotle, including questions of humanist political education and the role of art.

Through a close reading of primary sources, Basnett identifies the principal conceptual structure entwined with the understanding of human life as antagonistic to other animals, and outlines how forms of aesthetic experience disrupt this problematic concept in favour of a reconceptualization of what we call human. His analysis displaces the centrality of the human and attempts to open up a space for its transformation, both in terms of how humans relate to each other and in how humans relate to other animals.

More information can be found here:

https://utorontopress.com/9781487541446/adorno-politics-and-the-aesthetic-animal/

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. 

German/French Philosophy Conference: Interdisciplinarity and Critical Theory, May 25-26th (online)

20 Thursday May 2021

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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

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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