Being "a Good Animal": Adorno, Posthumanism, and International Relations

This article examines the potential contribution of the work of Theodor Adorno to the development of a posthuman analysis of international relations. Despite a recent blossoming of Adorno studies, his writings on nature, particularly his concerns regarding human relations with other species, have received comparatively little attention. This article argues that many of the central concerns driving the recent development of posthuman analyses of international relations overlap with some of Adorno's core preoccupations. In Dialectic of Enlightenment in particular, much concern is directed at the perceived disenchantment with nature and the impacts of this disenchantment both on human relations with the rest of nature and with interhuman relations. Adorno's focus on the attention to suffering being the condition for all truth is not restricted simply to the human and coincides with the ethical concerns of posthuman approaches. Finally, while it has been claimed that Adorno's work, especially his notion of the totally administered society, leads to a political impasse, it will be suggested here that recent work by Fabian Freyenhagen on the practical elements of Adorno's philosophy suggest that our priority, rather than living rightly, should be on living less wrongly.