25 February 2023, University of Warwick, UK
The event will also be streamed online. Registration required.
This hybrid one-day symposium on Theodor W. Adorno's essay 'Sexual Taboos and Law Today' will be held at the University of Warwick on 24 February 2023 and on Zoom. The event is bringing together scholars from the fields of legal studies, psychoanalysis, pedagogics, social theory, and philosophy to revisit Adorno's controversial essay in times of #MeToo, identity politics, and heightened public concern for gender equality and transgender rights.
'It's a nice bit of sexual utopia not to be yourself. [...] What is merely identical with itself is without happiness.'
Programme
10.00–10.30 Registration and coffee
10.30–10.45 Introduction by the organisers (Antonia Hofstätter & Simon Gansinger)
10.45–12.15 Panel 1: Sex and Taboo
Julia König (University of Mainz): Reflections on the 'Minors-Complex' in Adorno's 'Sexual Taboos and Law Today' and in Current Moral Panics
12.15–13.30 Lunch
13.30–15.00 Panel 2: Sex and Society
Craig Reeves (Birkbeck): Persecution, Punishment, and the Potential for Freedom: Reactualising Adorno's Critical Moral Psychology
15.00–15.15 Coffee
15.15–16.45 Panel 3: Sex and Crime
Nicola Lacey (LSE): A Feminist Criminal Lawyer's Retrospective on Adorno's Text
16.45–17.00 Coffee
17.00–18.00 Roundtable with all speakers
19.00–22.00 Dinner
Description
First published in 1963, Theodor W. Adorno's essay 'Sexual Taboos and Law Today' responded to changing attitudes to love and desire during a period of sexual liberation. Critiquing repressive bourgeois morality and progressive sexual values alike, 'Sexual Taboos and Law Today' suggests that the utopian potential of intimacy is inseparable from the challenges sexuality poses to self and society. The essay's most famous line – 'It is a nice bit of sexual utopia not to be yourself' – already locates the promise of sexuality in the momentary dissolution of identity. It meets with Adorno's claim that without its anarchical and transgressive aspects sexuality becomes neutralised and inert. Yet, these aspects evoke society's contempt: 'What is specifically sexual is eo ipso forbidden,' Adorno writes.
'Sexual Taboos and Law Today' sheds light on the dynamics of desire and disdain, freedom and punishment, losing oneself and finding oneself that characterise the 'brittle integration' of sexuality into modern society. Ultimately, these dynamics destabilise the sphere of law and morality, and problematise modern conceptions of subjectivity and identity.
Today, in times of #MeToo, identity politics, and heightened public concern for gender equality and transgender rights, 'Sexual Taboos and Law Today' invites renewed scrutiny. This one-day symposium explores the tensions that Adorno's text brings to the fore in the sphere of legal theory, social critique, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. Making these tensions fruitful for the present moment is the overarching aim of this event.
This event has been organised with the generous support of the Aristotelian Society, the Society for Applied Philosophy, and the British Society for the History of Philosophy.
Details
Please visit our website for more details, or follow this link to register for the event (attendance in person or via Zoom): https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/485669930837
Please note that participants intending to attend the event in person will be required to leave a £5 deposit when registering. £4.09 of your deposit will be returned to you when you attend the event in person (an administrative fee of £0.91 will be kept by Eventbrite).
Lunch, coffee, and snacks will be provided. Please indicate on the registration form whether you would like to attend the conference dinner at your own expense.
If you have any questions, please contact the organisers at or .
