Toolbox in the Summer Term 2025
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
hierarchy of norms
“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”
Andreas Fischer-Lescano
problem to be solved
“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”
Martin Nonhoff
every day
“Living in contradictions is what we experience every day. Why do we know so little about it?”
Gisela Febel
Afterlife of colonialism
“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)
Rozena Maart