Toolbox – Contradiction Studies #1 in the winter term 2025/26
relational
“At first I thought contradiction was always a relational thing; but the more I ponder it, the more I think contradiction creates relation.”
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
articulate
“Contradictions need to be articulated in order to exist.”
Martin Nonhoff
hierarchy of norms
“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”
Andreas Fischer-Lescano
Bhabha on enlightenment and coloniality
“Homi Bhabha says about the contradiction between the ideals of the enlightenment, claims to democracy and solidarity and simultaneous colonization and ongoing coloniality: ‘That ideological tension, visible in the history of the West as a despotic power, at the very moment of the birth of democracy and modernity, has not been adequately written in a contradictory and contrapuntal discourse of tradition.’”
Kerstin Knopf