Working Paper “Einrichtungsantrag Contradiction Studies – Konstellationen, Heuristiken und Konzepte des Widersprüchlichen, Lesefassung”

Monograph

Michi Knecht, Ingo H. Warnke, Gisela Febel, Andreas Fischer-Lescano, Kerstin Knopf, Elisabeth Lienert, Julia Lossau, Anna Mattfeldt, Martin Nonhoff, Susanne Schattenberg, Norman Sieroka, Yan Suarsana

2023

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

Back to overview
driver

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

Norman Sieroka
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
power and resistance

“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”

Gisela Febel
problem to be solved

“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”

Martin Nonhoff
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