Portraitfoto Eva Arnaszus

Eva Arnaszus

Legitimizing Religion: Romuva’s Struggle for Legal Recognition as a Religion in Post-Independence Lithuania

2020 marked a decisive moment for religious minorities when the pagan community Romuva went before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to overturn Lithuania’s parliamentary decision to deny them state-recognized status. A country-wide discussion on religion, legitimacy and law surrounds the issue with contradictory historic narratives while Romuva’s status isn’t yet confirmed. My research seeks to investigate how the negotiation of the concept of religion is reflected in law and in the practices of Romuva.

Research interests
  • Transcultural studies
  • Minority studies
  • Nation Building
  • Philosophy of Language
  • Transhumanism
Vita
  • 2017 – 2022
    Technical writer at SAP
  • 2013 – 2016
    M.A. Transcultural Studies at Heidelberg University
  • 2011 – 2012
    volunteer at Women Empowerment Through Self-Help Groups in Ahmedabad, India
  • 2008 – 2011
    B.A. Philosophy at Bonn University
Talks, Workshops, and Events
  • 2023
    Talks: Romuvas Kampf um die rechtliche Anerkennung als Religion im unabhängigen Litauen at the Kickoff-Workshop of the WoC-Lab Religion glokal. University of Bremen. 12.10.2023.
  • 2015
    Symposium Histories of Japanese Art and their Global Contexts: New Directions. 22.10‐24.10.2015 Heidelberg University.
  • 2014
    Conference Transcultural Framing(s): Materials and Metaphors. 31.10-2.11.2014, Heidelberg University.
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
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
interstice

“The contradiction of law in Derrida lies in the interstice that separates the impossibility of deconstructing justice from the possibility of deconstructing law.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
problem to be solved

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

Martin Nonhoff
l’illusion d’une unité

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

Ingo H. Warnke