Philosophy in a World of Multi-Crisis: Deborah Nyangulu in Conversation with Souleymane Bachir Diagne

Between May and July 2024, Prof. Dr. Souleymane Bachir Diagne from Columbia University was a U Bremen WOC International Guest Professor at the Collaborative Research Platform Worlds of Contradiction (WOC) at the University of Bremen. During his stay, RTG Contradiction Studies Postdoctoral Researcher, Dr. Deborah Nyangulu sat down with Diagne in a video interview. Filmed at the Übersee-Museum in Bremen, the interview covers a range of topical issues from  the importance of philosophers/academis to speak out against injustices, decolonizing museums, to strengthening African institutions.

Back to overview
Is contradiction eurocentric?

“Is contradiction a eurocentric concept, operational phenomenon, and instrument of power?”

Kerstin Knopf
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
every day

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

Gisela Febel
ideal of a contradiction-free world

“Science has long been animated by the ideal of a contradiction-free world in which logical orders could merge with society, politics, culture and language. In the GRC Contradiction Studies we are working on ways of describing the multiplicity and complexity, the danger and beauty of our worlds that clearly go beyond concepts of freedom from contradiction.”

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