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

Faculty

The Research Training Group is run by thirteen faculty members of the University of Bremen and is a place of interdisciplinary exchange of empirical cultural studies, social and cultural anthropology, German and interdisciplinary linguistics, literary studies (Romance literary and cultural studies, North American and postcolonial literary and cultural studies, Medieval and Early Modern German literary studies), law, human geography, political science, history of Eastern Europe, philosophy, and religious studies.

Spokespeople of the RTG

Researcher

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

idea of democratic critique

“If you think that acts of contradicting someone always need to point to better solutions, you haven’t really understood the idea of democratic critique.”
Martin Nonhoff

driver

“Contradictions are an important driver of scientific practice and knowledge.”
Norman Sieroka

coherence in thought

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

relational

“At first I thought contradiction was always a relational thing; but the more I ponder it, the more I think contradiction creates relation.”
Ingo H. Warnke