Toolbox – Contradiction Studies #5 in the winter term 2025/26
coherence in thought
“The imperative of non-contradiction generally produces a coherence in thought that is often at odds with social complexities.”
Yan Suarsana
city
“The city is a laboratory not only of modernity, but also of contradiction.”
Julia Lossau
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
diversity and plurality
“Join us to create more diversity and plurality in knowledge production.”
Gisela Febel
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