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 widely unknown 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. The workshop will take up the specifically interdisciplinary research focus sketched in Adorno's project. We ask all participants to reconsider this program from their own 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 – intellectual, psychic, sensual, reflective and affective in nature – can be analyzed. Special attention will be given to literary and other aesthetic forms reflecting and responding to processes of anthropological deformation and to the relationship.

Further Information

Sebastian Tränkle: s.traenkle@fu-berlin.de