Welcome to the DFG Research Training Group Contradiction Studies

The international and interdisciplinary Research Training Group (RTG) “Contradiction Studies” at the University of Bremen, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG),  has been exploring the formation, negotiation, and explanatory limitations of contradiction. We start from the assumption that the ordering figure of contradiction which includes the imperative of resolving contradiction often stands in a relationship of tension to experiences of the contradictory in everyday life. read more

News

Publications

Events

  • Ivan Kalmar, White But Not Quite: Is There Anti-Eastern European Racism?

    Ivan Kalmar, Anke Hilbrenner (HHU Düsseldorf) & Klaas Anders (RTG Contradiction Studies)
    04/06/2025 7:00 pm
    Foyer Großes Haus, Goethepl. 1-3

    Discussion in English In White But Not Quite: Central Europe’s Illiberal Revolt (2022), Ivan Kalmar examines the political and cultural developments in Central Europe, in particular the emergence of illiberal movements in post-communist societies such… read more

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The members of the RTG

The Research Training Group is run by twelve 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.

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city

“The city is a laboratory not only of modernity, but also of contradiction.”

Julia Lossau
coherence in thought

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

Yan Suarsana
paradox

“The basis of law is not an idea as a systematic unified principle but a paradox.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
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
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