Nikita Dhawan
Nikita Dhawan holds the Chair of Political Theory and History of Ideas at the Technical University Dresden. In 2023 she was Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor at Stanford University and Thomas Mann Fellow at Thomas Mann House, Los Angeles.
From 2018 to 2021, she was Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at the University of Gießen. Previously from 2014 till 2018 she was Professor of Political Science (Political Theory and Gender Studies) and Director of the Research Platform Gender Studies: "Identities – Discourses – Transformations" at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Previously she was Director of the “Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies” (2009-2016), Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
She has held visiting fellowships at Universidad de Costa Rica (2013); Institute for International Law and the Humanities, The University of Melbourne, Australia (2013); Program of Critical Theory, University of California, Berkeley, USA (2012); University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain (2011); Pusan National University, South Korea (2011); Columbia University, New York, USA (2008).
Her publications include: Impossible Speech: On the Politics of Silence and Violence (Academia: 2007); Hegemony and Heteronormativity: Revisiting “the Political” in Queer Politics (co-ed., Ashgate: 2011); Decolonizing Enlightenment: Transnational Justice, Human Rights and Democracy in a Postcolonial World (ed., Barbara Budrich: 2014); Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (with Maria do Mar Castro Varela, in German; transcript: 2015); Global Justice and Desire: Queering Economy (co-ed., Routledge: 2015); Negotiating Normativity: Postcolonial Appropriations, Contestations and Transformations (co-ed., Springer: 2016).
One of the enduring focal points of her work has been to explore the historical, economic, socio-political and cultural entanglements between Europe and the postcolonial world. The aim is to understand fundamental ethical and epistemological questions of political and social inequality, intersectionality and diversity, (women’s) human rights, gender violence, religion and secularism, democracy, cosmopolitanism, transnational (gender) justice, migration and globalization. Furthermore her recent research also focuses on the relation between states, civil society and subaltern groups with regard to questions of citizenship, political agency and social vulnerability.
From 2018 to 2021, she was Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at the University of Gießen. Previously from 2014 till 2018 she was Professor of Political Science (Political Theory and Gender Studies) and Director of the Research Platform Gender Studies: "Identities – Discourses – Transformations" at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Previously she was Director of the “Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies” (2009-2016), Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
She has held visiting fellowships at Universidad de Costa Rica (2013); Institute for International Law and the Humanities, The University of Melbourne, Australia (2013); Program of Critical Theory, University of California, Berkeley, USA (2012); University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain (2011); Pusan National University, South Korea (2011); Columbia University, New York, USA (2008).
Her publications include: Impossible Speech: On the Politics of Silence and Violence (Academia: 2007); Hegemony and Heteronormativity: Revisiting “the Political” in Queer Politics (co-ed., Ashgate: 2011); Decolonizing Enlightenment: Transnational Justice, Human Rights and Democracy in a Postcolonial World (ed., Barbara Budrich: 2014); Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (with Maria do Mar Castro Varela, in German; transcript: 2015); Global Justice and Desire: Queering Economy (co-ed., Routledge: 2015); Negotiating Normativity: Postcolonial Appropriations, Contestations and Transformations (co-ed., Springer: 2016).
One of the enduring focal points of her work has been to explore the historical, economic, socio-political and cultural entanglements between Europe and the postcolonial world. The aim is to understand fundamental ethical and epistemological questions of political and social inequality, intersectionality and diversity, (women’s) human rights, gender violence, religion and secularism, democracy, cosmopolitanism, transnational (gender) justice, migration and globalization. Furthermore her recent research also focuses on the relation between states, civil society and subaltern groups with regard to questions of citizenship, political agency and social vulnerability.
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The talk is inspired by the belief that our histories of the past should be strategic interrogations of the present as a way of enabling imaginaries for post-imperialist futures. The effort is to outline the relation between aesthetics, ethics and politics and their role in nurturing the capacity for thinking the future of what is to come.
The talk is inspired by the belief that our histories of the past should be strategic interrogations of the present as a way of enabling imaginaries for post-imperialist futures. The effort is to outline the relation between aesthetics, ethics and politics and their role in nurturing the capacity for thinking the future of what is to come.
The talk is inspired by the belief that our histories of the past should be strategic interrogations of the present as a way of enabling imaginaries for post-imperialist futures. The effort is to outline the relation between aesthetics, ethics and politics and their role in nurturing the capacity for thinking the future of what is to come.
Papers by Nikita Dhawan
Over the six decades since it officially ended, the Algerian War has become a key event for marking, retrospectively, the beginning of a new era in European, Western and global history. This new era is characterized by the proclaimed end of Western hegemony-by the proclaimed end of European history as global, universal history. This era, our era, understands itself as the time after the domination of the West, a time or multiple times of "post": the time of postcolonialism, but also postmodernity, postsecularism, posthumanism.
The times of “post” are characterized by a fundamental reconfiguration of
the relations between European civilization and its Others, first and
foremost by the proclaimed split between Europe and its Others, and more
generally by the disintegration, disruption and dispersion of the – allegedly
– unified space of culture, knowledge and discourse. The postcolonial era
is an era of diversity and difference, an era of dispersions and diasporas,
where the space of culture is a space of multiple cultures, a space of inbetween, of “inter”: the space of the intercultural, but also the
interreligious, interethnic, interracial and inter-epistemic.
This conference will reflect on the “inter” in the time of “post”. We invited
scholars, thinkers, intellectuals and artists to discuss various aspects and
models of intercultural dynamics that have been developed and articulated in the aftermath of the Algerian War or of other events that marked the decline of Western hegemony, such as the Second Vatican, May 1968 or the Vietnam War. How did the age of decolonization reshape the discourse and practice of intercultural relations? To what extent interculturality itself is a sign or a site of decolonization? To what extent, on the contrary, intercultural relations may reproduce colonial or generate neocolonial patterns?
Contributions examine the emergence of intercultural notions and practices in various intellectual traditions, European or non-European; the
development of new categories and constellations of identity, otherness
and dialogue; the interrelations between epistemic, cultural, discursive,
religious and political aspects; as well as reactions to these new
developments and various forms of critique and resistance. We are
especially interested in how this reflection may shed light on socio-political and cultural phenomena, trends and concerns of the present time.
Next to academic debates, the conference will also include events that
approach the question of intercultural relations from literary, artistic and
musical perspective. Accordingly, the program will include a public
discussion with experts on Algerian literature, a panel with Berlin-based
artists who work on postcolonial issues, and a concert of intercultural
music performance by vocal artists.
In this class, we will engage with liberal, republican, Marxist, feminist, poststructuralist, queer and postcolonial theories of the state to address these ambivalences and understand how the state reinforces but also mitigates global inequality and injustice.
Readings:
Brown, Wendy. 1992. Finding the Man in the State. In States of Injury, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Davis, Angela. 2005. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture, New York: Seven Stories Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 2005. Rogues. Two Essays on Reason, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Foucault, Michel. [1978-1979] 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège De France, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Jessop, Bob. 2016. The State. Past, Present, Future, Cambridge: Polity.
MacKinnon, Catharine. 1989. Toward a feminist theory of the State, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mbembe, Achille. 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture 15 (1): 11-40.
Mills, Charles. 1997. The Racial Contract, New York: Cornell University Press.
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract, Cambridge: Polity.
Poulantzas, Nicos. 2000. State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso.
Puar, Jasbir. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, 1-36. Durham: Duke University Press.
Scott, James. 2009. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
In this class, we will engage with critical scholarship to address the conundrums of memory politics and historiography and to explore the convergences and divergences between Jewish, Post-Shoah and Post-Colonial Studies.
Readings:
Anidjar, Gil (2003). The Jew, The Arab. A History of the Enemy, Stanford: Stanford University Press
Arendt, Hannah (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Cleveland/New York: Meridian.
Brumlik, Micha (2021): Postkolonialer Antisemitismus? Hamburg: VSA Verlag.
Butler, Judith (2012). Parting Ways. Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Césaire, Aimé (1955). Discourse on Colonialism. New York : Monthly Review Press.
DuBois, W.E.B. (1949). "The Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto": https://europe.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/314/2021/02/DuBois-The-Negro-and-the-Warsaw-Ghetto.pdf
Goetschel Willi and Ato Quayson (2016). Introduction: Jewish Studies and Postcolonialism, In: The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 3(1): 1–9.
Mufti, Aamir (2007): Enlightenment in the Colonies. The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rothberg, Michael (2009). Multidirectional Memory Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Shohat, Ella (2017). On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements: Selected Writings of Ella Shohat. London, Pluto Press.
Steinbacher, Sybille/Dan Diner (2022). Ein Verbrechen ohne Namen, C.H. Beck: München.
Readings:
Alvarez, Sonja/Faria, Lalu/Nobre, Miriam 2004: „Another (Also Feminist) World is Possible: Constructing Transnational Spaces and Global Alternatives from the Movements”, In: Sen, Jai/Anand, Anita/Escobar, Arturo/Waterman, Peter (eds.): World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: Black rose Books: 199–206.
Butler, Judith (2015): Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. London/Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Fraser, Nancy (2007): „Transnationalizing the Public Sphere. On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World”. In: Theory, Culture & Society 24 (4): 7-30.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (2009): “They the People. Problems of alter-globalization.” Radical Philosophy 157: 32-37.
Readings:
Arendt, Hannah (1970): On Violence. New York/London: Harcourt Brace.
Butler Judith (2020): The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. New York: Verso.
Fanon, Frantz (1963[1961]): The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin.
Gandhi M.K. (1969) “Ahimsa or the way of non-violence.” In: Kripalani K (ed.) All Men Are Brothers: Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as Told in His Own Words. Paris: UNESCO.
The talk is inspired by the belief that our histories of the past should be strategic interrogations of the present as a way of enabling imaginaries for post-imperialist futures. The effort is to outline the relation between aesthetics, ethics and politics and their role in nurturing the capacity for thinking the future of what is to come.
The talk is inspired by the belief that our histories of the past should be strategic interrogations of the present as a way of enabling imaginaries for post-imperialist futures. The effort is to outline the relation between aesthetics, ethics and politics and their role in nurturing the capacity for thinking the future of what is to come.
The talk is inspired by the belief that our histories of the past should be strategic interrogations of the present as a way of enabling imaginaries for post-imperialist futures. The effort is to outline the relation between aesthetics, ethics and politics and their role in nurturing the capacity for thinking the future of what is to come.
Over the six decades since it officially ended, the Algerian War has become a key event for marking, retrospectively, the beginning of a new era in European, Western and global history. This new era is characterized by the proclaimed end of Western hegemony-by the proclaimed end of European history as global, universal history. This era, our era, understands itself as the time after the domination of the West, a time or multiple times of "post": the time of postcolonialism, but also postmodernity, postsecularism, posthumanism.
The times of “post” are characterized by a fundamental reconfiguration of
the relations between European civilization and its Others, first and
foremost by the proclaimed split between Europe and its Others, and more
generally by the disintegration, disruption and dispersion of the – allegedly
– unified space of culture, knowledge and discourse. The postcolonial era
is an era of diversity and difference, an era of dispersions and diasporas,
where the space of culture is a space of multiple cultures, a space of inbetween, of “inter”: the space of the intercultural, but also the
interreligious, interethnic, interracial and inter-epistemic.
This conference will reflect on the “inter” in the time of “post”. We invited
scholars, thinkers, intellectuals and artists to discuss various aspects and
models of intercultural dynamics that have been developed and articulated in the aftermath of the Algerian War or of other events that marked the decline of Western hegemony, such as the Second Vatican, May 1968 or the Vietnam War. How did the age of decolonization reshape the discourse and practice of intercultural relations? To what extent interculturality itself is a sign or a site of decolonization? To what extent, on the contrary, intercultural relations may reproduce colonial or generate neocolonial patterns?
Contributions examine the emergence of intercultural notions and practices in various intellectual traditions, European or non-European; the
development of new categories and constellations of identity, otherness
and dialogue; the interrelations between epistemic, cultural, discursive,
religious and political aspects; as well as reactions to these new
developments and various forms of critique and resistance. We are
especially interested in how this reflection may shed light on socio-political and cultural phenomena, trends and concerns of the present time.
Next to academic debates, the conference will also include events that
approach the question of intercultural relations from literary, artistic and
musical perspective. Accordingly, the program will include a public
discussion with experts on Algerian literature, a panel with Berlin-based
artists who work on postcolonial issues, and a concert of intercultural
music performance by vocal artists.
In this class, we will engage with liberal, republican, Marxist, feminist, poststructuralist, queer and postcolonial theories of the state to address these ambivalences and understand how the state reinforces but also mitigates global inequality and injustice.
Readings:
Brown, Wendy. 1992. Finding the Man in the State. In States of Injury, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Davis, Angela. 2005. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture, New York: Seven Stories Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 2005. Rogues. Two Essays on Reason, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Foucault, Michel. [1978-1979] 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège De France, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Jessop, Bob. 2016. The State. Past, Present, Future, Cambridge: Polity.
MacKinnon, Catharine. 1989. Toward a feminist theory of the State, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mbembe, Achille. 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture 15 (1): 11-40.
Mills, Charles. 1997. The Racial Contract, New York: Cornell University Press.
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract, Cambridge: Polity.
Poulantzas, Nicos. 2000. State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso.
Puar, Jasbir. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, 1-36. Durham: Duke University Press.
Scott, James. 2009. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
In this class, we will engage with critical scholarship to address the conundrums of memory politics and historiography and to explore the convergences and divergences between Jewish, Post-Shoah and Post-Colonial Studies.
Readings:
Anidjar, Gil (2003). The Jew, The Arab. A History of the Enemy, Stanford: Stanford University Press
Arendt, Hannah (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Cleveland/New York: Meridian.
Brumlik, Micha (2021): Postkolonialer Antisemitismus? Hamburg: VSA Verlag.
Butler, Judith (2012). Parting Ways. Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Césaire, Aimé (1955). Discourse on Colonialism. New York : Monthly Review Press.
DuBois, W.E.B. (1949). "The Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto": https://europe.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/314/2021/02/DuBois-The-Negro-and-the-Warsaw-Ghetto.pdf
Goetschel Willi and Ato Quayson (2016). Introduction: Jewish Studies and Postcolonialism, In: The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 3(1): 1–9.
Mufti, Aamir (2007): Enlightenment in the Colonies. The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rothberg, Michael (2009). Multidirectional Memory Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Shohat, Ella (2017). On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements: Selected Writings of Ella Shohat. London, Pluto Press.
Steinbacher, Sybille/Dan Diner (2022). Ein Verbrechen ohne Namen, C.H. Beck: München.
Readings:
Alvarez, Sonja/Faria, Lalu/Nobre, Miriam 2004: „Another (Also Feminist) World is Possible: Constructing Transnational Spaces and Global Alternatives from the Movements”, In: Sen, Jai/Anand, Anita/Escobar, Arturo/Waterman, Peter (eds.): World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: Black rose Books: 199–206.
Butler, Judith (2015): Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. London/Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Fraser, Nancy (2007): „Transnationalizing the Public Sphere. On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World”. In: Theory, Culture & Society 24 (4): 7-30.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (2009): “They the People. Problems of alter-globalization.” Radical Philosophy 157: 32-37.
Readings:
Arendt, Hannah (1970): On Violence. New York/London: Harcourt Brace.
Butler Judith (2020): The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. New York: Verso.
Fanon, Frantz (1963[1961]): The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin.
Gandhi M.K. (1969) “Ahimsa or the way of non-violence.” In: Kripalani K (ed.) All Men Are Brothers: Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as Told in His Own Words. Paris: UNESCO.
Vivek Chibber (2013 a, b) vor, weil an dessen Thesen eine lebhafte Debatte zwischen eher orthodoxen Marxist*innen und Postkolonialen Theoretiker*innen entbrannt ist. Daran anschließend werden wir einige der feministisch-postkolonialen Interventionen skizzieren. Wir tun auch dies exemplarisch anhand von Gayatri Chakravorty Spivaks Schriften, die unserer Ansicht nach die wohl differenzierteste feministische-postkoloniale Antwort auf marxistische Orthodoxie zur Verfügung gestellt hat. Spivak präsentiert eine vielfältige affirmative Sabotage marxistischer Schriften, in der sie diese wertschätzt und gleichzeitig einer Kritik unterzieht.
Nach dem Tod des Afro-Amerikaners George Floyd durch die Gewalt eines weißen Polizisten habe das seit "Jahrhunderten bestehende Problem" des Rassismus "die nötige Aufmerksamkeit" bekommen, sagt die Politikwissenschaftlerin Nikita Dhawan. Es dürfe aber kein "Strohfeuer" bleiben. Der Diskurs müsse auch in Deutschland zu nachhaltigen strukturellen Veränderungen führen. Rassismus könne man genau wie Faschismus "verlernen", doch müssten sich Politik und Zivilgesellschaft aktiv für Antirassismus einsetzen.
Considering the historical role of art in colonial and fascist regimes, can one entrust art with the task of decolonization? Theodor Adorno’s famous assertion “There can be no poetry after Auschwitz” bears witness to the disillusionment with the promise of art and artists as avant-garde. It is a struggle with the puzzle: How could the land of Bach, Goethe and Kant produce Hitler, Goebbels and Eichmann? How could a society with such sublime art, music, poetry, literature and philosophy commit such heinous crimes against humanity? Furthermore, given that art functions within structures of capitalism and neo-colonialism, the political, social, economic role of art, artistic practices and art institutions in current conditions of global inequality remains ambivalent and controversial.
My talk will address the role of an aesthetic education (Spivak) in the pursuit of post-imperial global ethics and politics. Can the political labor of training the imagination mitigate imperialist, racist, orientalist and heteronormative structures and practices?
in the ‘Colonial Repercussions’ event series at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/planetary-utopias
Postkoloniale Studien, die sich mit dem Erbe des weltweiten Kolonialismus und Imperialismus auseinandersetzen, erfahren derzeit insbesondere von rechter aber auch liberaler Seite Kritik: Ihnen wird vorgeworfen, gegen die Aufklärung, nihilistisch, eurozentrisch und schließlich antisemitisch zu sein. Nikita Dhawan argumentiert dagegen, dass diese Vorwürfe bestenfalls auf Missverständnissen des Projektes der Dekolonisierung beruhen. Sie versucht, den »versäumten Begegnungen« zwischen Postkolonialen und Holocaust Studies nachzuspüren und darüber hinaus die »Identitätsverwechslung
« zwischen postkolonialen und dekolonialen Ansätzen zu bereinigen. Zusammenfassend beleuchtet Dhawan die widersprüchlichen Konsequenzen der Aufklärung, ohne einen gegenaufklärerischen Standpunkt einzunehmen. »Die Aufklärung vor Europa retten« bedeutet für
sie, die Unabdingbarkeit der Aufklärung in der Umsetzung kritischer Projekte zu behaupten, zugleich aber ihr »giftiges Erbe« mitzudenken.
Diese Einführung erschließt das weite Feld postkolonialer Theoriebildung über eine kritische Debatte der Schriften der drei prominentesten postkolonialen Stimmen – Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak und Homi Bhabha.
Die aktualisierte dritte Auflage unterzieht insbesondere die neuen Schriften Spivaks und Bhabhas einer kritischen Würdigung und erlaubt einen aktuellen Überblick über diese bedeutenden Theoriewerke.
Die dritte Auflage setzt sich zugleich mit den gegenwärtigen Diskussionen um Globalisierung, Religion, Menschenrechte und Dekolonisierung auseinander und gibt einen Überblick über die aktuellen Debatten in den Postcolonial Studies.
Das Standard-Lehrbuch zum Thema Postkoloniale Theorie gibt einen Überblick über die wichtigsten Theorien und Debatten in den Postcolonial Studies und bereitet diese systematisch für das Studium der Kulturwissenschaften auf.
Is it possible to reimagine the state in ways that open up projects of political transformation? This interdisciplinary collection provides alternative perspectives to the ‘antistatism’ of much critical writing and contemporary political movement activism. Contributors explore ways of reimagining the state that attend critically to the capitalist, neoliberal, gendered and racist conditions of contemporary polities, yet seek to hold onto the state in the process. Drawing on postcolonial, poststructuralist, feminist, queer, Marxist, and anarchist thinking, they consider how states might be reread and reclaimed for radical politics. At the heart of this book is state plasticity – the capacity of the state conceptually and materially to take different forms. This plasticity is central to transformational thinking and practice, and to the conditions and labour that allow it to take place. But what can reimagining do; and what difficulties does it confront?
This book will appeal to academics and research students concerned with critical and transformative approaches to state theory, particularly in governance studies, politics and political theory, socio-legal studies, international relations, geography, gender/sexuality, cultural studies and anthropology.
Global Justice and Desire addresses economy as a key
ingredient in the dynamic interplay between modes of
subjectivity, signification and governance. Bringing together
a range of international contributors, the book proposes
that both analyzing justice through the lens of desire, and
considering desire through the lens of justice, are vital for
exploring economic processes.
Postkoloniale Theorie zielt darauf ab, die verschiedenen Ebenen kolonialer Begegnungen in textlicher, figuraler, räumlicher, historischer, politischer und wirtschaftlicher Perspektive zu analysieren. Der Fokus liegt dabei nie auf einzelnen Regionen oder Disziplinen – vielmehr wird versucht, die sozio-historischen Interdependenzen und Verflechtungen zwischen den Ländern des »Südens« und des »Nordens« herauszuarbeiten.
Gleichwohl widersetzt sich der Begriff »postkolonial« einer exakten Markierung: Weder bezeichnet er einen spezifisch-historischen Zeitraum noch einen konkreten Inhalt oder ein klar bestimmbares politisches Programm.
Diese Einführung eröffnet das weite und dynamische Feld postkolonialer Theoriebildung über eine kritische Debatte der Schriften der drei prominentesten postkolonialen Stimmen – Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak und Homi Bhabha. Die stark überarbeitete und aktualisierte zweite Auflage unterzieht insbesondere die neuen Schriften Spivaks und Bhabhas einer kritischen Würdigung, setzt sich aber auch ausführlich mit den gegenwärtigen Diskussionen um Globalisierung, Religion, Menschenrechte, transnationale Gerechtigkeit, internationales Recht, Entwicklungspolitiken und Dekolonisierung auseinander.
»Mit der ersten Auflage ›Postkoloniale Theorie‹ von María do Mar Castro Varela und Nikita Dhawan ist diese kritische Theorierichtung im deutschsprachigen Raum angekommen. Die komplett überarbeitete und deutlich erweiterte zweite Auflage integriert nun die wichtigsten Weiterentwicklungen postkolonialer Theorie. Sie richtet sich an Einsteiger/-innen und Kenner/-innen postkolonialer Theorie gleichermaßen. Ein Muss für alle, die sich kritisch mit Gesellschaftstheorien beschäftigen.«
(Shalini Randeria, Rektorin, Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Wien & Professorin, The Graduate Institute, Genf)
»Dies ist eine klare und kompetente Darstellung der Hauptrichtungen postkolonialer Theorie.«
(Anil Bhatti, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)
dispensers of justice, rights and aid, and those who are coded as receivers? Critical race theorists, feminists, queer and postcolonial theorists confront these questions and offer
critical perspectives on the enduring intellectual and political legacies of the Enlightenment and the contradictory consequences for the postcolonial world.
emancipation and silence as censorship. Some questions addressed in the work are: When is speech politically enabling and when does it become repressive? Can silence be subversive? And when is silence a performance of power and
violence? If discursive violence is inevitable, why not give
preference to silence over discourse? And lastly why one
should not avoid speaking?
analysis of power and domination from a queer perspective, whilst also examining the possibilities for political analysis
and strategy-building provided by theories of hegemony and heteronormativity. Moreover, in addressing these issues the
book strives to rethink the understanding of the term "queer", so as to avoid narrowing queer politics to a critique of
normative heterosexuality and the rigid gender binary. By looking at the interplay between hegemony and
heteronormativity, this ground-breaking volume presents new possibilities of reconceptualizing 'the political' from a queer
perspective. Investigating the effects of queer politics not only on subjectivities and intimate personal relations, but also on institutions, socio-cultural processes and global politics, this book will be of interest to those working in the fields of critical theory, gender and sexuality, queer theory, postcolonial studies, and feminist political theory.
The talk will tackle three issues: The first part will address the question: »How to imagine a post-imperial world?« The second part will engage with the responses put forth by Vladimir Lenin, Theodor Adorno and Jacques Derrida to the question »What is to be done?« And finally the talk will grapple with the question that Angela Davis raises: »How does change happen?«
The aim of the conference is to celebrate the launch of the Center for Intersectional Justice, recall the story behind this initiative and to provide an opportunity for social justice advocates and activists across Europe to connect.
We will discuss opportunities, challenges and steps ahead: Around what issues will our advocacy efforts be centered? How can the political obstacles and practical dilemmas be overcome? How can synergies, cooperation and common goal setting be promoted with other organisations active in the field of anti-discrimination?
Keynote address: Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Speakers: Nikita Dhawan, Kübra Gümüsay, Amandine Gay, Reni Eddo-Lodge and many others!
This event is organized by the Center for Intersectional Justice, in cooperation with ICI Berlin, and generously funded by the Hertie Foundation.
https://www.intersectionaljustice.org/2017-07-18-inauguration-conference
(Frantz Fanon 1961: The Wretched of the Earth)
Colonialism presented itself as a triumph of the civilized, moral, rational, superior human that altruistically carried the burden of bringing the fruits of reason, modernity, liberty, equality, emancipation, technology, progress, rule of law from Europe to other parts of the world. European colonizers arrogated to themselves the role of protectors and enforcers of the norms of ‘human’, ‘humane” and ‘humanity’, while justifying slavery and genocide on the grounds that “primitive” populations, who were defined to be at inferior stages of humanity, threatened the moral sanctity of European civilization. It was argued that if the natives wanted to qualify as ‘human’, they must adopt European practices, values, norms, and institutions.
The normative violence that historically informed Eurocentric and androcentric definitions of ‘human’ and ‘humanity’ endures in the postcolonial world. My talk will interrogate how contemporary discourses of cosmopolitan humanitarianism and human rights are inflected by neo-colonial impulses and argue that a reconfiguration of our normative understandings of ‘being human’ is imperative in order to envision non-dominant futures.
Interrogating popular perceptions of the “benevolent” international civil society versus the “wicked” state, my talk will contest normative understandings of subversion and political agency. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France, I argue that state-phobia is one of the fundamental preconditions for the emergence of postcolonial governmentality. Focusing on subaltern groups, who can neither access organs of the state nor transnational counterpublics, I will demonstrate the limits of the vanguardism of extra-state collective action and the state-phobic politics of the alter-globalization lobby. Against pursuing for or against positions vis-à-vis the state, my talk will engage with the Derridian/Spivakian idea of the postcolonial state as Pharmakon - poison as well as medicine.
Revisiting Foucault’s controversial proposal to treat rape like a “punch in the face”, Dhawan's talk will address issues of gendered vulnerability and political agency, shame and guilt, accountability and governmentality, surveillance and securitization, to investigate the role of civil society and the state in promoting and obstructing gender justice. Instead of pursuing for or against positions vis-à-vis the state and judiciary, she will explore the Derridian/Spivakian idea of state as pharmakon - medicine as well as poison.
Here is the video of the talk:
https://www.ici-berlin.org/event/640/
Next to highlighting the role of the state, the pandemic has also made visible how critique of the state has been in large part monopolized by the new Right. Since the 1990s, the European Left has been caught between an embrace of neoliberal policies and a nostalgia for the welfare state, leaving little space for re-imagining the state otherwise. Can this moment of crisis provide opportunities for a new politics able to overcome the state/anti-state dichotomy that emerged with full force during the past pandemic year? Can we identify new emerging ‘arts of government’ in a range of experiments with autonomy and the commons that might refound the notion of the public – and that often confound right-left divides?
Free addmission (first come-first served basis)
SAT 23.6.2018
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, Berlin
12:30–1 PM
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WELCOME
Johannes Odenthal (Programme Director, Akademie der Künste, Berlin)
Thomas Krüger (President, Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb, Berlin)
Wolfgang Kaleck (General Secretary, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, ECCHR, Berlin)
Joachim Bernauer (Head of Culture Department, Goethe-Institut, Munich Head Office)
Nikita Dhawan (Professor of Political Theory and Gender Studies, University of Innsbruck)
1–3 PM
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OPENING PLENARY: Resignation, Disenchantment and Reenchantment
Sara Ahmed (Independent Postcolonial Scholar and Feminist Writer, London)
David Scott (Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York City)
Moderation: Nikita Dhawan
3:30–5:30 PM
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ARTIST PANEL: Imagination
Kader Attia (Visual Artist, Berlin/Paris)
Gina Belafonte (Co-Director, Sankofa Organization for Social Justice, New York City)
Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro (Artist, Curator and Postcolonial Scholar, Berlin)
Moderation: Alya Sebti (Curator and Director, ifa-Galerie, Berlin)
6–8 PM
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PANEL: Hope
Nadje Al-Ali (Professor of Gender Studies, SOAS University of London)
Nadia Yala Kisukidi (Associate Professor, University Paris 8)
Rolando Vázquez (Associate Professor of Sociology, University College Roosevelt, Utrecht)
Moderation: Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel (Lecturer, Goethe University Frankfurt)
SUN 24.6.2018
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, Berlin
2:30–4:30 PM
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PANEL: Desire
Maria do Mar Castro Varela (Professor of Pedagogy and Social Work, Alice Salomon University, Berlin)
Antonio Y. Vázquez Arroyo (Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark)
Françoise Vergès (Chair of Global South(s), Collège d’études mondiales, Paris)
Moderation: Rahul Rao (Senior Lecturer in Politics, SOAS University of London)
5–8 PM
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CLOSING PLENARY: Planetary Utopias
Angela Davis (Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and of Feminist Studies, University of California Santa Cruz)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (University Professor in Humanities, Columbia University, New York City)
Moderation: Nikita Dhawan
July 23-28, 2016 | Istanbul, Turkey
Pharmakon: State and State Phobia,
Congress Session 06 - Political Theory
Convenor: Prof. Nikita Dhawan
It is a commonplace claim that the problem of global inequality cannot be solved within the frame of the nation-state. In the face of global interdependence and mistrust of state authorities, international civil society is increasingly at the helm of global governance. However, the staging of civil society as an agent of salvation and the devolution of state power can have pernicious consequences, particularly for subaltern groups, who are simultaneous targets of civil society paternalism and state violence. The recent rise in anti-state discourses, for instance in protest movements, reflect Friedrich Nietzsche’s image of the state as monstre froid (coldest of all cold monsters). This anti-state-centric approach to political power, locates radical politics in extra-state space of innovation. However, as Michel Foucault warns, state-phobia is an important function of neoliberal governmentality.
The panel invites papers that draw on postcolonial, queer and feminist approaches to the dynamics between state and civil society. Instead of for or against positions vis-à-vis the state, we welcome papers that explore the function of the state in terms of Jacques Derrida’s idea of pharmakon, both poison and medicine. Herein the inherent contradictions in the functioning of the state must be engaged with: Violence and justice, ideology and emancipation, law and discipline. The challenge is how to reconfigure the state in the era of globalization so as to redress global inequalities.
Language: English
Chair: Prof. Nikita Dhawan
Discussants: Prof. Davina Cooper; Prof. Maria do Mar Castro Varela
Paper proposal submission (deadline 7th october 2015): https://istanbul2016.ipsa.org/events/congress/istanbul2016/submit-paper.
Decolonizing Epistemologies, Methodologies and Ethics: Postcolonial-Feminist Interventions
2nd July 2015
International Conference
Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies
The Cluster of Excellence: The Formation of Normative Orders
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
Panel Discussion “Postcolonial Europe” with Sanjay Seth (Goldsmiths, University of London), Gregory Lee (University of Lyon), Gunlög Fur (Linnaeus University), Francisco Carballo (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Ian Chambers (Università degli Studi di Napoli).
From research design to data collection, from data analysis to communicating findings, research practices and procedures are implicated in the reproduction and reinforcement of asymmetrical relations of power between the 'subjects' and 'objects' of knowledge production. By silencing heterodox approaches, privileging norms of rationality, neutrality and universality as standards for measuring scientific validity, and policing the borders of what qualifies as legitimate knowledge, the academia functions as a key site for the perpetuation of Eurocentric and Androcentric epistemologies, methodologies and ethics.
Contesting the epistemic violence inherent in the processes of generation and dissemination of hegemonic discourses, postcolonial-feminist scholarship foregrounds questions of positionality, self-reflexivity and reciprocity in critical research frames and practices. It also draws attention to the importance of emancipatory epistemologies and methodologies in order to facilitate social and political transformation.
The aim of this international conference is to rethink epistemologies, methodologies and ethics within an intersectional and transnational framework. The focus will be on the power effects of knowledge-seeking practices as well as the urgency of transforming academic research towards more ethical and responsible production of knowledge in a postcolonial world.
Submission of Paper Proposals
We invite paper proposals that address the key challenges for a power-sensitive postcolonial-feminist approach to questions of ethical dimensions of epistemic and methodological practices.
Please submit abstracts (max. 350 words) and a short bio-note (max. 100 words) by 15th April 2015 to: dhawan [at] normativeorders.net
Registration
Participation is free of charge. Please register for the conference by 20th June 2015: at: frcps.mail [at] googlemail.com
Keynote: Prof. Dr. Sara Ahmed (Goldsmiths, University of London)
In contrast to the understanding of critique as fault-finding, negative evaluation, legitimate rejection or condemnation, a critical understanding of critique unfolds it to be a process of production and revelation of crisis. As a mode of radical questioning, of unsettling self-evident answers, of interfering in established relations of power, it is simultaneously a self-critical process. The standard understanding of criticism privileges an Archimedean point that is positioned outside the context it seeks to critique. This assumes the validity of its own perspective prior to the practice of criticism that remains unquestioned. In the process it does not problematize its own criteria and position and thereby ends up stabilizing the prevalent power relations. But there is no position beyond power to exercise critique; rather it entails the questioning of the constitutive violence of dominant theories, concepts and norms. Critique thereby becomes an intervention, a resistance to conformity, a tool that can bring the production of truths into crisis. It disrupts secure foundations, interrupts the functioning of discourses, not to substitute them with more accurate alternative epistemes, but to reveal the complexity, contingency and violence of our “regimes of truth”. Critique may thereby be understood as an exercise of exposing “constellations of power”, of voluntary insubordination, of desubjugation.
The aim of understanding the practice of critique is not a mere exercise of investigating the content of the act critique, but to explore the accompanying processes of subject-formation that the mode of questioning as well as the reflection on the processes of critique bring about. This is neither about exposure of error, nor about good or bad, right or wrong according to accepted standards. It is neither a method nor a theoretical position, rather critique is an exploration of how it may be possible to think otherwise – persistently denaturalizing and historicising the order of things. It is a practice in which we pose the question of the limits of our most sure ways of knowing, doing and thinking. It entails a crisis of the epistemological framing of our worlds. Consequently, a critical attitude is carried out by the willingness to submit fundamental truths to questioning, a refusal to accept anything on faith or authority. In doing so, the practice of critique entails risk-taking, a putting oneself in danger in the face of existing power. It is ruthless in the sense that it does not fear its own consequences.
Here is the video link to the event:
http://www.frcps.uni-frankfurt.de/?page_id=2397
Instead of rendering colonialism marginal to Holocaust studies and the Holocaust to Postcolonial Studies, new scholarship exploring important links between imperialism and European Fascism is emerging. Issues ranging from “concentration camps” in the German colonies to racial ideologies and fantasies of supremacy are being extensively investigated. Some commentators, however, remain sceptical about these comparisons and challenge the continuity thesis by emphasising Holocaust uniqueness. These positions raise questions whether the Holocaust can be juxtaposed to other experiences of extreme historical violence. Other scholars emphasize connections between colonial rule and the Nazi regime by examining how colonialism was fuelled by and in turn reinforced perceptions of European racial superiority. Furthermore the link between the loss of German overseas colonies and Nazi expansionism in Eastern Europe as a form of “internal colonization” is highlighted. Seminal work by critics like Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire unfold the links between the events of the First and Second World Wars and imperialism, thereby opening up possibilities for a broader understanding of genocide, which encompasses both colonialism as well as the Holocaust.
Cognizant of the specificity of the German context and history, the aim of this workshop is to contribute to the emerging critical field that seeks to think together the legacies of colonialism and the Holocaust. Confronting shared issues like “Paradox of Modernity“, “Biopolitics”, “Decolonization” and “Anti-Fascism”, “Gender and Sexual Politics”, the workshop explores how Postcolonial Studies and Holocaust Studies can productively work together to unfold the violence exercised in the name of racial ideologies and imperial political projects. The discussions will revolve around exploring both the differences and similarities between various genocidal instances of world history and the consequences for remembrance politics in a postcolonial world.
Allen, Amy, 2016: The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, New York.
Flikschuh, Katrin / Ypi, Lea, 2014 (Hg.): Kant and Colonialism: Historical and Critical Perspectives, Oxford.
Ein Großteil der Forschung zur Aufklärung ignoriert den Kolonialismus entweder kom-plett oder behandelt ihn als marginal verglichen mit dem als wichtiger angesehenen An-liegen der Rehabilitierung der Aufklärung. Erfreulicherweise ist im letzten Jahrzehnt jedoch eine konzertierte Anstrengung zu beobachten, die darauf zielt, die möglichen Verbindungen zwischen der Aufklärung und dem europäischen Kolonialismus zu thematisie-ren. Allerdings wird dabei zumeist lediglich versucht ein Korrektiv des postkolonialen Verweises der epistemologischen Investition der Aufklärung in den Imperialismus bereitzustellen. KritikerInnen der Aufklärung wird vorgeworfen, die Aufklärung unfairerweise anzuklagen, weil diese die intellektuelle Infrastruktur und normative Legitimation zwang-hafter Praktiken und Institutionen in den Kolonien zur Verfügung gestellt habe. Mithilfe einer dichten Lektüre der politischen Theorie des 18. Jahrhunderts werden die darin operierenden subversiven Mechanismen herausgearbeitet. Prominent werden beispielhaft Immanuel Kants Arbeiten herangezogen, um die These zu untermauern. Insbesondere sein Spätwerk fördere, so wird dargelegt, einen inklusiven Universalismus, der die Idee einer normativen Gastfreundlichkeit gegenüber den Anderen Europas vorantrieb.
The volume "Kant and Colonialism" (Oxford University Press, 2014) proposes Kant’s later writings are anti-conquest, anti-empire and anti-war and his earlier racist and imperialist views are irrelevant to his final anti-colonialism. It is argued that postcolonial critics do not know what to make of the anti-imperialist impulses of eighteenth-century political thought. In my view, political theorists are still at a loss of how to deal with the profoundly racist and imperialist consequences of modern European thought. They are unable to come to terms with the profound contradiction that European Enlightenment was deeply exclusionary, coercive, and violent. Kant was undoubtedly a brilliant thinker and his writings are indispensable for anyone engaging with critical thought. While postcolonial theorists, who at times homogenize the Enlightenment by primarily focusing on its violent legacies, would profit from engaging with the arguments presented in this volume on the ambivalent legacies of Kant’s thought, advocates of Kant, who seek to recuperate his political thought would do well to heed Foucault’s advice of freeing ourselves of being for or against the Enlightenment and in turn its most important proponent, Immanuel Kant.