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.

Contact
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
  • 12.10.2023
    Talk Romuvas Kampf um die rechtliche Anerkennung als Religion im unabhängigen Litauen im Rahmen des Kickoff-Workshop des WoC-Labs Religion glokal, University of Bremen
  • 05.09.2023
    Talk Romuva’s State Recognition: Discursive Identity Building Through Contradiction at the 20th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions, Vilnius Lithuania
  • 22. – 24.10.2015
    Symposium Histories of Japanese Art and their Global Contexts: New Directions, University of Heidelberg
  • 31. – 02.11.2014
    Conference Transcultural Framing(s): Materials and Metaphors, University of Heidelberg
Back to overview
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
driver

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

Norman Sieroka
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
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