The Research Training Group 2686 Contradiction Studies researches the formation, negotiation and explanatory limits of contradiction.
The point of departure is the assumption that the ordering figure of contradiction with the imperative to resolve contradictions is often in tension with everyday experiences of contradictions in living together. Constellations of contradiction, contradiction avoidance, contradictions and practices of contradiction are therefore systematically researched and established as objects of investigation in the humanities, social sciences and law. The research group combines discourse-, narrative- and text-centred approaches with ethnographic and other qualitative-empirical methods. On the basis of case studies and genealogically or analytically orientated projects, the Centre carries out conceptual and theoretical work. This aims to re-evaluate contradiction, contradictions and contestation in their empirical constellations, heuristic functions and ontological dimensions – also in response to post- and decolonial discussions on the cosmopolitanisation of knowledge production.

The online publication can be found here: https://media.suub.uni-bremen.de/handle/elib/8014


DFG-GRK 2686. 2023. Einrichtungsantrag
Contradiction Studies – Konstellationen,
Heuristiken und Konzepte des Wider-
sprüchlichen, Lesefassung. Graduierten-
kolleg Contradiction Studies (GRK2686)
Working Paper Series #1_de. Bremen: U
Bremen

print
ISBN: 2942-7762

ebook
ISBN: 2942-7770

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diversity and plurality

“Join us to create more diversity and plurality in knowledge production.”

Gisela Febel
idea of democratic critique

“If you think that acts of contradicting someone always need to point to better solutions, you haven’t really understood the idea of democratic critique.”

Martin Nonhoff
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
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