DFG Research Training Group 2686: Contradiction Studies –

Constellations, Heuristics, and Concepts of the Contradictory

DFG Research Training Group 2686: Contradiction Studies –

Constellations, Heuristics, and Concepts of the Contradictory

Fascism’s Lingering: Antidisability Hostility in Past and Present

Workshop, Workspace/Kolloquim

Prof. Dr. Dagmar Herzog (New York) — WOC Guest Professor 2026

6/4/2026
2:00 pm – 6:00 pm

U Bremen GRA 2 – 0030 (Grazer Str. 2)

This collaborative workshop will engage in a close reading and critical analysis of primary source documents (in English translation) from 4 key moments in post-World War II German history: an excerpt of a transcript from a focus group discussion among working-class women held in 1950 in Frankfurt/Main, in which themes of Nazi sexual politics and the tenacious persistence of antidisability animus and “eugenic” propaganda are evident; excerpts from the testimony of coercive sterilization survivors and a historian advocating on their behalf at a session of the Bundestag in 1987; politicians’ cross-party motion of 2011 calling for a federal memorial to the victims of the Nazi “euthanasia” murders; and AfD and CDU campaign posters expressing opposition to inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream schools.

Workshop for Early Career Scholars from all disciplines, in English, with preparatory reading required.

External Registration: woc@uni-bremen.de

For more details see: U Bremen WOC INTERNATIONAL GUEST Professorship

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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

decolonial scholarship

“Creating decentralizing and decolonizing scholarship on contradiction, contradictory phenomena, and contradicting processes is a challenging task.”
Kerstin Knopf

Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)
Rozena Maart

Is contradiction eurocentric?

“Is contradiction a eurocentric concept, operational phenomenon, and instrument of power?”
Kerstin Knopf

l’illusion d’une unité

“Foucault speaks of contradiction as l’illusion d’une unité.”
Ingo H. Warnke