Contradiction Studies

»The danger of a single story« (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie). How to decolonize contradiction»

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Gisela Febel (RTG Contradiction Studies), Michi Knecht (RTG Contradiction Studies)& Kerstin Knopf (RTG Contradiction Studies)

06/30/2022 4:15 pm –5:30 pm

U Bremen GRA 2 0030

Readings

Da Costa Marques, Ivan. 2021. Decolonizing Knowledge Devices. In Andrea Ballestero & Brit Ross Winthereik (eds.).Experimenting with Ethnography. A Companion to Analysis, 219–234. Durham: Duke University Press. https://andreaballesterodotcom.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/ballesterowinthereik-2021-experimenting_with_ethnography.pdf (25.05.2022).

Maart, Rozena. 2020. Introduction – Decoloniality and Decolonial Education: South Africa and the World. In Alternation 33, 15– 44.

Mignolo, Walter D. 2007. DELINKING. The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and theGrammar of De- coloniality. In Cultural Studies 21(2), 449–514.

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
coherence in thought

“The imperative of non-contradiction generally produces a coherence in thought that is often at odds with social complexities.”

Yan Suarsana
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
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
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