Portraitfoto Samia Mohammed

Samia Mohammed

Towards a Critical Contemporary Theory of Freedom between
Necessity and Independence

Based on the observation that (political) interpretations of freedom are historically and currently characterized by contradictions, the dissertation project aims at systematically relating contradiction and freedom in order to propose a contemporary critical-theoretical concept of freedom. Thinking together radical democratic theory, Afropessimism, and feminist perspectives on the Anthropocene is thought to enable a double perspective on acts of contradiction as practices of freedom on the one hand and on the manifold and potentially contradictory conditions and grounds of freedom on the other.

Contact
Research Interests
  • Feminist theory
  • Radical democratic theory
  • Poststructuralist Theory
  • Political Economy
  • Theories and Utopias of Socialism
  • Theories of Freedom
Vita
  • 2019–2022
    MA Political Science/Political Theory at the University of Bielefeld, Goethe-University Frankfurt a.M./TU Darmstadt
    Master Thesis The Socialist Calculation Debate between Mastery of Nature and Emancipatory Promises: Democracy and Human Nature Relations in Socialist Utopias
  • 2015–2019
    BA Political Science, Literature at the University of Bielefeld
    Bachelor Thesis What culture is not – Ethnic Racism, Cultural Relativism and the Concept of Cultural Appropriation. An Analysis of Understandings of Culture in Rightwing and Leftwing Political Discourse
  • 2018
    ERASMUS+ Semester at the University SciencesPo Bordeaux, France
  • 2016–2022
    Student Assistant at University of Bielefeld, Faculty of Sociology, Department 4 Politics and Society
Publications
  • 2024
    Co-Editior of Zeitschrift Luxemburg Issue Zukunft mit Plan 01/2024.
  • 2024
    Rabea Berfelde / Justus Henze / Samia Mohammed / Eva Völpel: “Für eine Linke mit Plan.” In: Zeitschrift Luxemburg 01/2024.
  • 2023
    Zukunft jenseits des Marktes. Demokratie und gesellschaftliche Naturverhältnisse in sozialistischen Utopien. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
  • 2020
    Arnold, Clara/Flügel-Martinsen, Oliver/Mohammed, Samia/Vasilache, Andreas (Eds.): Kritik in der Krise. Perspektiven politischer Theorie auf die Corona-Pandemie. [Critique in Crisis. Political Theory Perspectives on the Covid Pandemic.] Baden-Baden: Nomos.
  • 2020
    Verletzliche Freiheit? Zur Kritik neoliberaler Freiheitsverständnisse in der Corona-Krise [Vulnerable Freedom? On the critique of neoliberal concepts of freedom in the Covid Crisis]. In: Arnold/Flügel-Martinsen/Mohammed/Vasilache (Hrsg.), Kritik in der Krise. Baden-Baden: Nomos, S. 33–47.
  • 2020
    Arnold, Clara/Mohammed, Samia Einleitung: Kritisches Denken als gemeinsame Praxis [Introduction: Critical thinking as collective practice]. In: Arnold/Flügel-Martinsen/Mohammed/Vasilache (Hrsg.), Kritik in der Krise. Baden-Baden: Nomos, S. 7–13.
Talks, Workshops and Events

  • 19.11.2024
    Talk Fugitive Freedom als radikaler Gegenentwurf zu formaler Befreiung as part of the Colloquium on Political Theory, University of Bremen
  • 09.11.2024
    Talk Planning for Freedom. Freedom Beyond Ecological Destruction in a Socialist Economy at the 21st Annual Historical Materialism Conference, SOAS London
  • 25.10.2024
    Panel Discussion Technologie und Planwirtschaft – Keine Lösung auf Knopfdruck in Sicht at the Festival Planstelle #1 – Blicke ins Mögliche. Science Fiction, Debatten, Spekulationen organized by Libertalia e.V. and Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brandenburg, Wachhaus Potsdam
  • 24.10.2024
    Talk Freiheit und Luxus für alle – ohne Naturbeherrschung oder Technofuturismus?, Aquarium am Südblock Berlin
  • 14.05.2024
    Talk Externalisierte Unfreiheit: “The Afterlives of Slavery” als Brennglas ungleicher Freiheit as part of the Colloquium on Political Theory, University of Bremen
  • 06.05.2024
    Panel Future of Socialisation: Democracy and Planning as part of the workshop Socialisation and Social Theory organized by Kritische Theorie in Berlin, Humboldt-University of Berlin 
  • 11.01.2024
    Talk Das Klima des Sozialismus. Demokratische Planwirtschaft als Utopie heute, Kukoon Kulturzentrum Bremen
  • 16.11.2023
    Panel Discussion Living with Contradictions as a Mixed-Race Person with Kwanza Muși Dos Santos, Deborah Ekoka and Nelson Sindze Wembe, Kukoon Kulturzentrum Bremen
  • 28.09.2023
    Panel Freiheit und ihre Widersprüche. Widerspruchsoffenes Theoretisieren als Methode einer Freiheitstheorie der Gegenwart as part of the Congress Politische Theorie in Zeiten der Ungewissheit, University of Bremen
  • 27. – 29.09.2023
    Co-Organizer of the International Congress Political Theory in Times of Uncertainty, University of Bremen
Back to overview
name contradiction

“Contradiction becomes real where someone names contradiction.”

Ingo H. Warnke
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
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
problem to be solved

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

Martin Nonhoff
hierarchy of norms

“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano