Nonidentity. Current Configurations in Critical Theories and Poetics (New York)
April 28-29, 2022
Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference at the Department of German, NYU in cooperation with the Department of Comparative Literature, NYU
Guest Speakers: Romy Opperman (New School), Anna Parkinson (Northwestern), Mark Christian Thompson (JHU), Robert J.C. Young (NYU)
Organized by Alexander Braunegg, Ioanna Kostopoulou and Julia Landmann
Can we mobilize concepts of nonidentity as resources for current configurations of resistance and disfiguration in critical theories and poetics? Our conference traces this question by connecting the emergence of nonidentity in the Frankfurt School with Postcolonial, Indigenous, and Black Studies. Focusing on contemporary entanglements of critical theories and poetics, we seek to provide answers on how postcolonial theories and the Frankfurt School enunciate concepts liminal to conceptualization.
According to Adorno/Horkheimer, the identity principle serves to dominate nature by subsuming particulars under universal concepts. An “ur-form of ideology”, the identity principle correlates with the compulsion towards identification with authority. In continuations of the normative and historically contextualized reflection of critical theory throughout the last decades however, certain notions of identity have been discussed as political tools to counter structural violence: identity politics started with analyses of forms of oppression of particularities by the governing concepts to reclaim the previously stigmatized accounts of social groups (Combahee River Collective) and has been critically reconfigured in postcolonial theorems like the third space (Bhabha). For both, the Frankfurt School and postcolonial theories, the relation between identity and nonidentity was intricately mediated.
Our conference seeks to discuss current reconfigurations of nonidentity in literary texts, in transformations of critical theory in Decolonial Theory, Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, as well as involvements with the Frankfurt School, that mediate between critiques of capitalism, colonialism, and racialization. We want to ask whether nonidentity can serve as a resource for resistance within the entwinement of thought and the economic and social sphere under the present political conditions.
Further information and registration links for in-person and virtual attendance may be found at https://as.nyu.edu/german/events/spring-2022/call-for-papers--nonidentity.html.
Thursday, April 28th
9.30-10.00: Introductions
10.00-11.15: Panel 1: Gaps, Exteriorities: Between dissociation and complicity
Marcus Döller, Erfurt
Non-identity as produced silence – Theodor Adorno with Stuart Hall and James Baldwin
Claire Tranchino, Buffalo
Undoing the Human: Dawn Lundy Martin and Theodor Adorno’s Lyric Critique
Moderator: Wendy Lotterman, NYU
13.00-14.15. Panel 2: Global entanglements of negative dialectics
Philipp Sperner, Munich / Vienna
Ambedkar, Adorno and a Global History of Nonidentity
Clara Funk, Frankfurt/Oder
Identical Dialogue? Theodor W. Adorno and Bolívar Echeverría on identity
Moderator: Eesha Kumar, NYU
14.30-15.45. Panel 3: Ambivalences and double binds as forms of critique
Adrian Guo Silver, Columbia
Anonymity in Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro
Julia Landmann, NYU
Transgressions of Critique between Theodor W. Adorno and Sylvia Wynter
Moderator: Aviv Hilbig-Bokaer, NYU
16.15-17.15. Keynote: Anna Parkinson, Northwestern
Contrapuntal Humanism: German Notes from a Jewish Diaspora
Response: Jay Garcia, NYU
Moderator: Alexander Braunegg, NYU
Friday, April 29th
09.30-10.45. Panel 4: (Non-)identical radicalizations: Irrationality and tabula rasa
Gianluca Cavallo, Frankfurt
Identity Thinking and the Authoritarian Personality
Saniya Taher, Berkeley
Un/Being: Ruminations on the Eschatological in Frantz Fanon “Colonial War and Mental Disorders” (1961) and Etel Adnan “To be in a Time of War” (2005)
Moderator: Rahel von Minden, NYU
11.00-12.15. Panel 5: Kinship issues: Erosions of (anti-)authoritarianism
Christina Chalmers, NYU
Non-identity against the family
Andrew Schlager, Princeton
Avunculars: Baldwin, Adorno, Sedgwick
Moderator: Ioanna Kostopoulou, NYU
13.00-14.15 Panel 6: Queering the limitations of nonidentity
Sophie Holzberger und Philipp Hohmann, Mainz / Bochum:
“An Army of Housewives Cannot Lose.” Nonidentity between women’s film and queer/feminist media practice
Levi Hord, Columbia:
What is the “Non” of “Non-Binary”? Indifference, Universalism, and Trans-of-Color Critique
Moderator: Arne Sander, NYU
14.30-15.45 Panel 7: Nonidentity in processes of signification
Philip Campanile, Berkeley:
Specious Species: the disidentification of Japanese knotweed
Noraedén Mora Méndez, USC:
Catachresis and nonidentity: Venezuela or how to read poetry [¿cómo leer la poesía?]
Moderator: Iván Hofman, NYU
16.15-17.15 Roundtable Discussion
Romy Opperman, New School
Mark Christian Thompson, JHU
Robert J. C. Young, NYU
Moderator: Julia Landmann, NYU