Graduate Research Colloquium in Contemporary Critical Thought (2023-2024)
Welcome to the Graduate Research Colloquium in Contemporary Critical Thought!
We are Florian (EHESS Paris) and Samu/elle (FU Berlin), two graduate students interested in creating a regular, bi-monthly online workspace for fellow MA and PhD students to discuss their research projects in the field of contemporary critical thought. Our goal is to connect students with similar research interests, in particular those working on the relation between theory and practice in the aftermath of two traditions of critical theorizing – Critical Theory (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, Habermas, …) and so-called Post-Structuralism (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Butler, Rancière, …). We welcome contributions from philosophy or political theory but also other relevant fields (sociology, literary theory, anthropology, art history, performance studies, data science, etc.).
Does your research build up on, engage with and/or move the concepts and tools made available by thinkers from one or both “schools of thought”? Or does it either address other framings of political struggles or investigate into the question how different critical theories can contribute to emancipatory practices as a response to the contemporary crises, or both? And are you interested in presenting and discussing your work with fellow graduate students working on similar questions? Then the GRCCCT might be just the right place for you!
We will kick off with a keynote by Amogha Binayaka Sahu about Max Horkheimer’s “Traditional and Critical Theory” on Monday, October 16, 2pm (NYC)/8pm (Berlin/Paris). Feel free to join and discuss his presentation to get a first impression of our group! In the following months, every participant will have the opportunity to present their own research and get critical feedback by the others. Moreover, we will invite external speakers from time to time and hold a hybrid conference at Columbia University and the EHESS in Paris in upcoming spring on “Revolutionary Tools: Framing Political Struggles after Critical Theory and Poststructuralism.” If our ideas sound interesting to you, we would like to invite you to become part of GRCCCT Please quickly fill out this form (2 minutes) and we will get back to you shortly!
Warmly,
Florian Meier (he/him) and Samu/elle Striewski (they/them)
Prospective Syllabus:
October 16, 2023 at 2pm NYC time/8pm Berlin/Paris time: Organizational meeting
October 30, 2023 at 2pm NYC time/8pm Berlin/Paris time: Amogha Binayaka Sahu (Columbia University) on “Horkheimer’s Dialectic: The Ambiguities of ‘Traditional and Critical Theory'”
November 13, 2023 at 2pm NYC time/8pm Berlin/Paris time: Marcus Döller (Max Weber Kolleg in Erfurt) on “Invisibility of Suffering – Conditions of Social Transformation”
November 27, 2023 at 2pm NYC time/8pm Berlin/Paris time: Jonas Zorn (Technical University Dortmund) on “The Neoliberalisation of the Political as Hermeneutical Hegemony”
December 11, 2023 at 2pm NYC time/8pm Berlin/Paris time: Kristian Svane (Hamburg University) on “Mimesis and Paranoia. Epistemologies, Ontologies, and Ethics of Relating to Objects”
January 22, 2024 at 2pm NYC time/8pm Berlin/Paris time: Björn Das on Provincializing Europe and Deprovincializing Racial Capitalism: a comparative analysis between Germany and France
February 5, 2024 at 2pm NYC time/8pm Berlin/Paris time: Samu/elle Striewski on “There are situations, moments, in which theory is pushed on further by praxis” (Marcuse to Adorno, 1969): Revising Recognition Theory from a Queerpolitical Standpoint
February 19, 2024 at 2pm NYC time/8pm Berlin/Paris time: What is a “genealogical critique”? Open questions in contemporary interpretations of Foucault’s genealogy in the field of social philosophy since 2001
May 21, 2024: Abolition et coopération (au Collège de France) with Bernard E. Harcourt