»Paying attention to contradictions ›allows an argument to take off in one direction by rendering another (direction of argument) also present‹« (Marilyn Strathern)

Michi Knecht (RTG Contradiction Studies)

07/07/2022 5:45 pm 7:00 pm

U Bremen GRA 2 0030

Readings

Bartole, Tomi. 2020. The Ontological Antinomy. Food, Surfaces, and Transcendence in the Village of Awim, Papua New Guinea. In HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 10(3), 874–889. https://doi.org/10.1086/711879 (17.05.2022).

Mol, Annemarie. 2002. TheBodyMultiple: Ontology inMedicalPractice. Durham: Duke University Press,Chap. 4:›Distribution‹, 87–118.

Back to overview
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
every day

“Living in contradictions is what we experience every day. Why do we know so little about it?”

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
problem to be solved

“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”

Martin Nonhoff
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