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Adorno and Performance offers the first comprehensive examination of the vital role of performance within the philosophy of Theodor W. Adorno. Capacious in its ramifications for contemporary life, the term ´performance´ here unlocks Adorno´s dialectical thought process, which aimed at overcoming the stultifying uniformity of instrumental reason.

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1. Introduction: Thinking Adorno and Performance; Will Daddario and Karoline Gritzner 2. Of Adorno´s Beckett; Michal Kobialka 3. Thoughts which do not understand themselves: On Adorno´s Dream Notes; Karoline Gritzner 4. Performativisation and the Rescue of the Aesthetic Semblance; Andrea Sakoparnig 5. On the ´difference between preaching an ideal and giving artistic form to the historical tension inherent in it´; Mischa Twitchin 6. Cooking Up a Theory of Performing; Anthony Gritten 7. Thinking Performance in Neoliberal Times: Adorno Encounters Neutral Hero; Ioana Jucan 8. Pleasing Shapes and Other Devilry: an Adornian Investigation of La Pocha Nostra Praxis; Stephen Robins 9. Thinking - Mimesis - Pre-Imitation: Notes on Art, Philosophy and Theatre in Adorno´s Aesthetic Theory; Marcus Quent 10. On the Theatricality of Art; Anja Nowak 11. Adorno and Performance: Thinking with the Movement of Language; Birgit Hofstaetter 12. What is Adorno Doing? Immanent Critique as Philosophical Performance; Mattias Martinson 13. The Vanity of Happiness: Adorno and Self-Performance; Julie Kuhlken 14. Writing as Life Performed; Martin Parker Dixon Bibliography Index

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´Adorno and Performance pursues Adorno in lifelong performance. A richly evocative, heterodox body of his work as a philosopher, sociologist, musicologist, composer, aesthetician, and literary critic (and Adorno was all of these) is called on by scholar-critics who think (and think smartly) about theater in the broadest ways possible: all the world´s a stage. This is a witty, highly informed, consistently thoughtful, indeed responsible investigation by young intellectuals as well as seasoned scholars, all of whom care about and with pretty much equal concern history, society, theater, performance, subjectivity, and human agency. Adorno speaks to them, but what they accomplish by way of Adorno is not a mirroring but a critical engagement for reasons that matter: the struggle for truths and the need for hope against whatever (usually considerable) odds.´ - Professor Richard Leppert, University of Minnesota, USA

´The recently revived interest in the work of T.W. Adorno has made clear the need for new ways of understanding his relevance to a critical appraisal of contemporary culture. Adorno and Performance offers a wealth of perspectives on how Adorno´s work can inform and be informed by reflection on performance, as something central both to the arts, particularly theatre and music, and to social and political life more generally.´ - Professor Andrew Bowie, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

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