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Adorno in the Kingdom of Unfreedom: History and Freedom’s Lecture The Principle of Nationality
Variations International Journal for Critical Theories 21 | 2018 L'industrie de la culture (2018)
  • Athina Karatzogianni
Abstract

The Principle of Nationality is the 12th Lecture in the volume History and Freedom, edited by Rolf Tiedemann and translated by Rodney Livingstone, one of 28 lectures, delivered by Theodor Adorno during 1964-5, based on tape recordings, and transcribed in the Institute of Social Research after each lecture. This 12th lecture, which is the inspiration for this short reflection on Adorno’s interest in the principle of nationality, was delivered 17 December 1964, a year before his magnum opus Negative Dialectics appeared, and five years before his death of heart attack, one month shy of his sixty-sixth birthday. This brief essay first situates the lecture in its historical and sociopolitical circumstances and unintended consequences, second, examines the lecture under a focused close reading mode, and third, offers glimpses of the broader contemporary relevance of Adorno’s 1964-1965 lectures overall, by providing key examples of the most recent Adorno-inspired scholarship.
Keywords
  • Adorno,
  • philosophy,
  • political theory
Publication Date
Spring March 15, 2018
Citation Information
Karatzogianni, Athina (forthcoming 2018) 'Adorno in the Kingdom of Unfreedom: History and Freedom’s Lecture The Principle of Nationality', in Variations issue 21. Online available at: https://journals.openedition.org/variations/943
Creative Commons license
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY-SA International License.