GRK 2686:  Contradiction Studies: Constellations, Heuristics, and Concepts of the Contradictory

• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology, Non-European Cultures, Jewish Studies and Religious Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 438590289

The Research Training Group (RTG) »Contradiction Studies« explores the formation, negotiation, and explanatory limits of contradiction. At its core, the group’s research program is organized around tensions between (i) the rational figure of non-contradiction, twinned with the imperative to resolve contradictions, and (ii) the lived experience of multiplicities of contradictions in everyday life.Constellations of contradiction, the avoidance of contradiction, contradictoriness, and practices of contradicting are established as systematic objects of investigation in the humanities, social sciences, and law. The RTG combines discourse-, narrative-, and text-centered approaches with ethnographic and other qualitative-empirical methods. Through case studies and genealogically or analytically-oriented projects, the RTG undertakes conceptual and theoretical work. It will re-evaluate contradiction, contradictions, and practices of contradicting in their empirical constellations, heuristic functions, and ontological dimensions—not least in response to postcolonial scholars’ calls for a cosmopolitanization of the humanities, social sciences, and law.The dissertation projects are of interdisciplinary nature: How do people live with and work against contradictions? In what social fields and with what effects are contradictions tied to the imperative of their resolution? To what extent is it important to develop ways of describing the social negotiation of diversity and incommensurabilities that point beyond the principle of freedom from contradiction? How can contradiction be critically questioned and decentered in the context of Western/Northern scholarly traditions and as part of the foundations of their knowledge production?The RTG is part of the research institution »Worlds of Contradiction« (WoC), funded as a strategic »Area of Potential« at U Bremen. While the projects in WoC cover a broad range of topics under the umbrella concept »Worlds of Contradiction«, the RTG »Contradiction Studies« establishes contradiction as a central, systematic object of investigation and explores it along the dimensions of historicization, discursivization, stabilization, and decentering in the RTG’s working areas of practices, texts/objects, and norms.The aim of the RTG is to train experts in living with contradictions: capable of analysing and evaluating contradictions in a sophisticated manner, and noted for their cultivated intellectual and social tolerance of ambiguity. With their specific methodical skills and knowledge, our graduates will contribute to the appreciation of complexity and diversity in the conflicts of contemporary globalized societies. They will thus help develop new practices and formats both to reflect on and live with contradictions. These competencies will allow them to make a positive contribution to a variety of fields, from politics and law to cultural mediation, international cooperation, the media, and research and science.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Universität Bremen
• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Michi Knecht
• Participating Researchers: Professorin Dr. Gisela Febel; Professor Dr. Andreas Fischer-Lescano; Professorin Dr. Kerstin Knopf; Professorin Dr. Elisabeth Lienert; Professorin Dr. Julia Lossau; Dr. Anna Mattfeldt; Professor Dr. Martin Nonhoff; Professorin Dr. Susanne Schattenberg; Professor Dr. Norman Sieroka; Professor Dr. Yan Suarsana; Professor Dr. Ingo Warnke; Professor Dr. Tyler Zoanni