Toolbox – Contradiction Studies #2 in the winter term 2025/26
Literature:
Priest, Graham. 1998. What is so bad About Contradictions? The Journal of Philosophy 95(8). 410–426.
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
l’illusion d’une unité
“Foucault speaks of contradiction as l’illusion d’une unité.”
Ingo H. Warnke
articulate
“Contradictions need to be articulated in order to exist.”
Martin Nonhoff
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
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