Adorno’s Rhinoceros

Antonia Hofstätter is a Teaching Fellow in German studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She completed her PhD in 2017 with a thesis on T. W. Adorno’s aesthetics at the University of Brighton, UK. She has contributed to Understanding Adorno, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2020), The “Aging” of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (2021), and Theodor W. Adorno: Ästhetische Theorie (2021).Daniel Steuer is an independent scholar living in Austria. Between 1989 and 2020, he taught European literature and social and political thought at Bangor University, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Sussex, and the University of Brighton, UK. He has published widely on Wittgenstein and Adorno, among other topics. His latest publication is a co-authored book, War and Algorithm (2019).

In these probing, eloquent, and sometimes lacerating essays, Adorno’s continuing fascination with the rhinoceros is the occasion for commentary on his claim that art, at least now, emerges as the stand-in for an absent nature, for a nature facing extinction. A surprising and demanding addition to both Adorno studies, and human reflection on art and the approaching disaster.

• AcknowledgmentsList of IllustrationsList of Contributors1. Introduction: The enigma of the rhinoceros, Antonia Hofstätter, (University of Warwick, UK)2. In the name of the rhinoceros: expression beyond human intention, Camilla Flodin (Uppsala University, Sweden)3. The rhinoceros at the bottom of the sea: Adorno, Dürer and the silent eloquence of artworks, Antonia Hofstätter (University of Warwick, UK)4. Just one line: reading T. W. Adorno on humans, artworks and animals, Lydia Goehr (Columbia University, USA)5. The mute animal, Alexander García Düttmann (Universität der Künste, Berlin, Germany)6. The speaking animal: on a metaphor of humanity, Sebastian Tränkle (Freie Universität, Germany)7. The gaze of the rhinoceros and the ‘it’ of Aesthetic Theory, Daniel Steuer (Independent Scholar, Austria)8. The muted animal, Daniel Herwitz (University of Michigan, USA)9. Epilogue: On the actuality of Adorno’s rhinoceros – extraction, extinction and dignity, Daniel Steuer (Independent Scholar, Austria)Index