Readings
Havel, Václav. 1985. The Power of the powerless. In Havel, Václav, John Keane & Steven Lukes (eds.), The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the state in central-eastern Europe, 23–96. London: Routledge.
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
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
driver
“Contradictions are an important driver of scientific practice and knowledge.”
Norman Sieroka
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
decolonial scholarship
“Creating decentralizing and decolonizing scholarship on contradiction, contradictory phenomena, and contradicting processes is a challenging task.”
Kerstin Knopf