Toolbox – Contradiction Studies #12 in the winter term 2025/26 – Workspace: Interner Workshop
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
problem to be solved
“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”
Martin Nonhoff
limits
“Resistance is a democratic right, sometimes a duty. With literature we can find models for this right and think about its limits.”
Gisela Febel
city
“The city is a laboratory not only of modernity, but also of contradiction.”
Julia Lossau
l’illusion d’une unité
“Foucault speaks of contradiction as l’illusion d’une unité.”
Ingo H. Warnke