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Was ist „Osteuropa“? Geschichte und Gegenwart eines widersprüchlichen Konzepts

Anastasia Tikhomirova (Journalist ZEIT and ZEIT Online), Hans-Christian Petersen (Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte des östlichen Europa Oldenburg), Artur Weigandt (Author and Journalist), Klaas Anders (RTG Contradiction Studies)

10/29/2024 7:00 pm

Bibliothek der Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst

Since the total invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army, the term “Eastern Europe” has been omnipresent – whether in social media posts or feature articles: Everyone is talking about “Eastern Europe”. But what does “Eastern Europe” actually mean? Who belongs to it and who doesn’t? How useful is it to lump Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Ukraine into one category? Are there “good” Eastern Europeans who are allowed to be in the EU and NATO, and “bad” ones who (have to) stay out?

We want to discuss these and other questions together with our guests. The focus will be on the contradictions that characterize the concept of “Eastern Europe” – a concept whose meaning is negotiated daily between Western ideas and a multitude of complex identities.

An event by

Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Worlds of Contradiction, globale° Festival für grenzüberschreitende Literatur, DFG-Graduiertenkolleg “Contradiction studies”, Weserburg Bremen

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city

“The city is a laboratory not only of modernity, but also of contradiction.”

Julia Lossau
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
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“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
name contradiction

“Contradiction becomes real where someone names contradiction.”

Ingo H. Warnke