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. The 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,
but also with inter-human 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, whilst 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.”