the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar

Robert Hullot-Kentor

A New Kind of Human Being and Who We Really Are

This lecture took place on October 14th, 2008 at 7:00 pm in the Wollman Auditorium at the Cooper Union

Lecture introduction

After living in New York City for four years as a refugee, T. W.  Adorno wrote a brief essay, “A New Type of Human Being” (1941) in which he wanted to understand how recent social transformations in the United States had produced “a new type of human being.” Adorno then went on to present the implications of this new type of person for art as well as for potential social protest and criticism.

In his discussion, Robert Hullot-Kentor will review Adorno’s understanding of this new kind of person. In part, at least, we will be obliged to recognize that we are pretty much what Adorno once saw in the offing. We will then consider in what way his reflections on this new person provide insight into several transformations of art and why it is that, on one hand, there is considerable social discontent and distress, as well as almost numberless journals and reviews devoted to social criticism, but, on the other hand, virtually no social criticism that is genuinely, compellingly, bindingly, penetratingly critical.

Along with Adorno’s essay we will have reference to Gordon Wood’s magisterial, “The Radicalism of the American Revolution.”

About Robert Hullot-Kentor

Robert Hullot-Kentor is a philosopher and social critic and teaches at the School of Visual Arts. His most recent book is Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on T. W. Adorno.

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