Welcome to the DFG Research Training Group Contradiction Studies
The international and interdisciplinary Research Training Group (RTG) “Contradiction Studies” at the University of Bremen, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), has been exploring the formation, negotiation, and explanatory limitations of contradiction. We start from the assumption that the ordering figure of contradiction which includes the imperative of resolving contradiction often stands in a relationship of tension to experiences of the contradictory in everyday life. read more
News
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Welcome to the second cohort!
We warmly welcome the second cohort of DFG-funded and associated doctoral fellows to the Research Training Group 2686: “Contradiction Studies” at the University of Bremen! We’re excited to embark on this three-year journey together, exploring and advancing the concepts and methods of Contradiction Studies. Here’s to inspiring collaborations and fresh perspectives!
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It is a Question of Self-Defense: A Conversation to the Up-Coming Event “White But Not Quite”
On April 6, Ivan Kalmar will be a guest at the Theater Bremen with his book “White But Not Quite”. A conversation between Ivan Kalmar and RTG member Klaas Anders can be read on the Theater Bremen’s website (in German). You can find more about the event on the Contradiction Studies website.
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Interview with RTG Member Klaas Anders about the Festival “So macht man Frühling”
The first chairman of the Bremer Alliance for German-Czech Cooperation and RTG member Klaas Anders was interviewed by Radio Prague International about this year’s and ninth edition of the festival “So macht man Frühling”. The entire article with insights into the Czech-German community in Bremen can be read here (in German).
Publications
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Not (yet) Banned, but Incompatible (Part II). On the Exclusion of AfD Members from a Trade Union
According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the AfD is now “definitely right-wing extremist”. It represents positions that fundamentally contradict fundamental trade union values. In this second part, I will show that the exclusion of AfD members from trade unions is also possible – contrary to what a recent decision…
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Not (yet) Banned, but Incompatible (Part I). On the Incompatibility of the AfD with Trade Unions
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) represents positions that contradict fundamental trade union values. Trade union representation of employees’ interests is not compatible with membership of the AfD. Trade unions can therefore declare the AfD to be an opposing organization by means of an incompatibility resolution and exclude members who are also members of the AfD…
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Disruptive und diskursive Ereignisse. Ein Vorschlag zur Ausdifferenzierung mit Beispielen aus dem feministischen Abtreibungsdiskurs Disruptive und diskursive Ereignisse
Against the backdrop of the notion of disruption, this article scrutinises cur-rent concepts of discursive events and places them in relation to one another. The disrup-tive events derived from this are understood as a subcategory of discursive event. Using the example of the feminist abortion discourse and by analysing practices of contradiction, it is determined…
Events
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Meditations on the Sea and its African Subjects, and the Complexities of European Nationalism
In this presentation, I engage with the African body that lands on European beaches via the Mediterranean sea, dead by exhaustion from crossing the ocean or dead as a consequence of boarding a vessel, which has capsized because it was not equipped to carry the embodied subject identities of Africans leaving the continent to seek…
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Toolbox #2: Heraclitus & Aristotle – Figures of Contradiction & The Law of Noncontradiction
Toolbox in the Summer Term 2025
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Introduction with Rozena Maart (Mercator Fellow)
The members of the RTG
The Research Training Group is run by thirteen faculty members of the University of Bremen and is a place of interdisciplinary exchange of empirical cultural studies, social and cultural anthropology, German and interdisciplinary linguistics, literary studies (Romance literary and cultural studies, North American and postcolonial literary and cultural studies, Medieval and Early Modern German literary studies), law, human geography, political science, history of Eastern Europe, philosophy, and religious studies.
