Workshop | Towards a "New Type of Human Being"? Conceptualising Anthropological Deformation
Organised by Sebastian Tränkle (EXC 2020) and Eric-John Russell (University of Potsdam), Research Area 3: "Future Perfect".
In a sketch for a broad interdisciplinary research project, Theodor W. Adorno aimed at investigating the rise of a new type of human being (1941). The project conceived of a socially determined human subjectivity as the imminent result of intensified processes of anthropological deformation. For Adorno, the figure of the individual appeared no longer as relatively autonomous in its aims and initiatives. Obliged to conform to an overwhelming social reality, its very constitution had become increasingly swallowed by socializing agencies.
The workshop will take up the specifically interdisciplinary research focus sketched in Adorno’s project. The participants will reconsider this program from their theoretical or methodological point of view. Our aim is to conceptualize such processes of deformation and their contemporary pertinence. Just as in Adorno’s agenda, we want to discuss how social deformation of various human faculties – social, intellectual, psychic, sensual, reflective and affective in nature – can be analyzed.
By exploring such interdisciplinary questions while anchoring the discussions in Adorno’s research proposal, the workshop will ask for both the historical trajectory and the contemporary relevance of a multi-layered critique of anthropological deformation.
Programme
Thursday, 27 July13:00-13:30 | Arrival
13:30-14:15 | Opening remarks
14:15-15:30 | Jordi Maiso (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): ‘The Organic Composition of Man is Growing’: Adorno’s Diagnosis on Anthropological Transformation, 80 Years Later
Chair: Anne Eusterschulte (Freie Universität Berlin)
15:45-17:00 | Antonia Hofstätter (University of Warwick): Atrophied Images: Childhood and the Deformative Gaze
Chair: Theodora Becker (Freie Universität Berlin)
17:00-17:30 | Coffee break
17:30-18:45 | Robert Hullot-Kentor (Emeritus, SVA New York): G.
Chair: Christoph Hesse (Freie Universität Berlin)
Friday, 28 July10:00-11:15 | Sebastian Tränkle (EXC 2020, Freie Universität Berlin): An Insect who Has the Jitters: On the Dialectic of Aesthetic Self-Formation
Chair: Alexandra Colligs (Universität Kassel)
11:30-12:45 | Christine Kirchhoff (International Psychoanalytic University Berlin): Formation and Deformation: On the Contemporary Nature of Subjectivity
Chair: Steen Thorsson (Journalist, Creative Artist)
12:45-14:14 | Lunch
14:15-15:30 | Eric-John Russell (Universität Potsdam): When what Is Known no Longer Has Any Meaning: Opinion as Epistemological Regression
Chair: Frank Engster
15:45-17:00 | Philip Hogh (Universität Kassel): On the Inability to Suffer
Chair: Isolda Mac Liam
17:00-17:30 | Coffee break
17:30-18:45 | Peter E. Gordon (Harvard University): Constitution or Distortion? Remarks on a Problematic Motif in Critical Theory
Chair: Sebastian Tränkle
Saturday, 29 July10:00-11:15 | Christine Achinger (University of Warwick): Damaged Goods: 'Kulturgüter' and the End of 'Bildung' in Higher Education
Chair: Eric-John Russell (Universität Potsdam)
11:30-12:45 | Lars Rensmann (Universität Passau): Reconfigurations of Modern Authoritarianism: On the Politics of Conformist Desublimation and the Dissociation of the Self on New Social Media
Chair: Sebastian Tränkle
12:45-13:15 | Coffee break
13:15-14:30 | Samir Gandesha (Simon Fraser University Burnaby, Canada): The Anthropological Deformations of Identity
Chair: Antonia Hofstätter (University of Warwick)
14:30 -15:00 | Roundtable
Further Information
Sebastian Tränkle: s.traenkle@fu-berlin.de.
Registration is required as seating is limited. To register your attendance, please email either Eric-John Russell (eric-john.russell@uni-potsdam.de) or Sebastian Tränkle (s.traenkle@fu-berlin.de).