»Paying attention to contradictions ›allows an argument to take off in one direction by rendering another (direction of argument) also present‹« (Marilyn Strathern)

Michi Knecht (RTG Contradiction Studies)

07/07/2022 5:45 pm 7:00 pm

U Bremen GRA 2 0030

Readings

Bartole, Tomi. 2020. The Ontological Antinomy. Food, Surfaces, and Transcendence in the Village of Awim, Papua New Guinea. In HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 10(3), 874–889. https://doi.org/10.1086/711879 (17.05.2022).

Mol, Annemarie. 2002. TheBodyMultiple: Ontology inMedicalPractice. Durham: Duke University Press,Chap. 4:›Distribution‹, 87–118.

Back to overview
l’illusion d’une unité

“Foucault speaks of contradiction as l’illusion d’une unité.”

Ingo H. Warnke
coherence in thought

“The imperative of non-contradiction generally produces a coherence in thought that is often at odds with social complexities.”

Yan Suarsana
prison of difference

“‘Contradiction is the prison of difference‘ writes the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Worlds of Contradiction asks: how can we explain and describe the world without making it more coherent and systematic than it is?”

Michi Knecht
hierarchy of norms

“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)

Rozena Maart