Advertising Poster for the panel discussion Living with contradictions as a mixed-race person.

Living with Contradictions as a Mixed-Race Person

Deborah Ekoka, Kwanza Musi Dos Santos & Samia Mohammed

11/16/2023 7:00 pm 9:00 pm

Kukoon Kulturzentrum | Buntentorsteinweg 29-31, 28201 Bremen

Being a black person in Europe can be challenging, but the experience is even more arduous for mixed races. Navigating between multiple cultural identities and belongingness, an interracial individual often confronts conflicting expectations and may feel marginalised in a world that can be inhospitable.

“I am black and I am white; I am not black and I am not white”. This quote comes from Deborah Ekoka, in her article and in the collective book (Metamba Miago) which she coordinated and contributed to as a co-author, the duality and self-contradiction that a person of mixed-race faces in regard to their racial identity is explored. This experience is further complicated when others attempt to categorise and label the individual into a rigid identity box, failing to recognise the intricacies and complexities of their construction as a subject. In a society fixated on binary distinctions, mixed-race individuals must navigate and construct their own identity through the negotiation between various forms of otherness.  This event features a conversation between Deborah Ekoka (Afro-Spanish), Kwanza Musi Dos Santos (Afro-Italian) and Samia Mohammed (Afro-German) who will be sharing their personal insights about the complexities of identity construction and the subjectivation of mixed-race individuals in Europe.

Kukoon Kulturzentrum | Bundentorsteinweg 29-31, 28201 Bremen. Doors open at 18:00.

Back to overview
driver

“Contradictions are an important driver of scientific practice and knowledge.”

Norman Sieroka
sustained engagement

“The history of Western philosophy can be understood as a sustained engagement with contradiction.”

Norman Sieroka
power and resistance

“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”

Gisela Febel
ideal of a contradiction-free world

“Science has long been animated by the ideal of a contradiction-free world in which logical orders could merge with society, politics, culture and language. In the GRC Contradiction Studies we are working on ways of describing the multiplicity and complexity, the danger and beauty of our worlds that clearly go beyond concepts of freedom from contradiction.”

Michi Knecht
name contradiction

“Contradiction becomes real where someone names contradiction.”

Ingo H. Warnke