Talk title: "Adorno and Black Studies: Toward a New Conversation"
Summary: "Discussions about Theodor Adorno's relationship to black studies often begin and end with his infamous critique of jazz music. Moving beyond this impasse, scholarship by authors like Paul Gilroy, Fumi Okiji, and Eric Oberle demonstrates surprising affinities between Adorno and strands of black critical thought regarding aesthetics, remembrance of suffering, utopian longings, and a persistent sense of the violence that organizes the world. In this essay, I contribute to these discussions by juxtaposing Adorno's key ideas alongside the insights of authors like Saidiya Hartman, Frank Wilderson, Fred Moten, and Hortense Spillers. In the first part of the essay, I focus on the work of the negative, or the refusal of affirmation, as a common terrain. In the second part, I underscore connections between Adorno and black studies around themes of home, fugitivity, and unsettlement."
Political Science
