Can literature capture catastrophe?

In Theodor Adorno’s critical theory, he often privileges literature as the very tool that would allow us to talk about catastrophes.

Suggested reading

On the surface, this may be surprising; considering that fiction is often, of course, fictional, it seems strange that Adorno would appeal to novels to talk about the real crises in politics and society. However, as we will see, Adorno interprets this gap, this very fictional quality, as the critical core of literature. Springing off Walter Benjamin’s theory of allegory, Adorno was interested in modes of writing that illustrated catastrophes via diversion rather than those which represent such crises more directly (for example, a descriptive newspaper report about Auschwitz). Whilst Adorno had the Holocaust in mind when ascribing literature its ability to represent what we otherwise struggle to represent, we might consider how we might unpack and interrogate this literary theory in light of the current pandemic.

The talk for this discussion will be given by DPhil student Lillian Hingley, a Hertford-English Faculty Scholar in Irish Literature and founder of the TORCH-funded Oxford Critical Theory Network. Thanks to Ashley Singh on behalf of oxford public philosophy for organizing.