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/scientific assistant at University of Bielefeld, Faculty of Sociology, Department 4 Politics and Society.

Publications

  • 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

  • 2023
    Invited guest at the panel discussion Living with Contradictions as a Mixed-Race Person. With Kwanza Muși Dos Santos, Deborah Ekoka and Nelson Sindze Wembe. Kukoon Kulturzentrum Bremen. 16.11.2023.
  • Congress Political Theory in Times of Uncertainty, 27.09-29.09.2023, University of Bremen.
Back to overview
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
coherence in thought

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

Yan Suarsana
every day

“Living in contradictions is what we experience every day. Why do we know so little about it?”

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
earthing

“Geography as a discipline stands for a certain worlding, if not earthing, of contradiction, in both theoretical and pracitcal respect.”

Julia Lossau