Description

"The astrological ideology resembles, in all its major characteristics, the mentality of the 'high scorers' of the Authoritarian Personality." So writes Theodor Adorno in "The Stars Down to Earth" (1957), a content analysis of a popular astrology column in The Los Angeles Times. Far more than a distraction, astrology is for Adorno symptomatic of a generalized submission to the irrational forces shaping everyday life. Astrology, in this account, maintains a powerful purchase over peoples' lives not through acts of truth-telling, but in relation to its studied capacity to avoid falsifiable truth claims.

What are we to make of Adorno's essay? The contemporaneity of his arguments appears plain enough in an era of QAnon, pseudoscience, and charismatic leaders. We seem to have entered a “new dark age” (Bridle 2018); lost in a maelstrom of data and conspiracy theories, shadowy deep states, and various paranormal phenomena (e.g. Kingsbury 2019; Lepselter 2016). Perhaps the rise of conspiracy thinking reflects a growing inability to cognitively map the dizzying flows and spatial contours of global capitalism (Toscano and Kinkle 2015; Jameson 1984)? But what then of astrologies, cosmologies, and celestial visions that are affirmative in nature; socially radical; and profoundly resistant to "identity thinking"?

Parsing these (and other) trajectories, our panel session invites re-readings and first readings of "The Stars Down to Earth" (1957). Our starting point is the conceptual join of irrationalism and what we might call "authoritarian natures": How do we make sense of the senseless? How do we bring the stars down to earth? We welcome a variety of standpoints and critical perspectives. While we expect the discussion to address contemporary politics, treatments might also consider post-war anti-Semitism; the long history of astrology in European fascism; or the links Adorno discerned between New Age and the Far Right in California. They might engage broader treatments of irrationalism in geographical theory (Harrison 2014); eco-fascism and fossil fuel cultures (Zetkin, Forthcoming); or the problems of nature and gender that persistently inform Adornian thought (Cook 2011). We are less interested in confident forecasts than we are in accounts that linger on the strange details Adorno saw as so important to the analysis of cultural politics. Join us for spirited debate and humble guesswork as we Zoom towards unknowable horizons...

This session will be organized for virtual participation. Please send abstracts that relate to the themes and questions addressed above to Max Ritts (max.ritts@alumni.ubc.ca) and Key MacFarlane (kmacfarl@ucsc.edu) by October 22, 2020.