Last updated 5. March 2025 | Alternative Lehre
The following events took place in the winter semester 2022/2023 in autonomous teaching:
Autonomous writing group: Writing together, practicing feedback
The practice of writing is an important part of our everyday study life, but is rarely made a topic and is then often related to assessment and pressure to perform.
In this seminar, we would like to create a space in which our own writing projects can be developed, read, reflected on and discussed with each other
in order to constantly find new starting points for our writing. Each participant has the opportunity to bring their own text during the semester – a term paper, an excerpt from a thesis or another writing project.
One focus is also on working together, i.e. getting to know each other, learning from each other and with each other. We want to try out how we can give and receive helpful feedback. What tools can we give each other? How can we strengthen each other?
And again and again: why and for what do we want to write?
The event will be held (mainly) in German, but you are also welcome to bring English texts!
Introduction to the work of Karl Marx – From political philosophy to political economy
In this course, we would like to trace the development of Marx’s thought
. To this end, excerpts from Marx’s various creative phases will be worked through together and placed in relation to each other.
Starting with the writings of the so-called “early Marx”, such as the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, through The German Ideology and the Manifesto of the Communist Party, to the “late Marx” of Capital, the development from a disappointed young Hegelian from his engagement with philosophy via political theory to a critique of political economy will be shown.
The aim is to show how his work builds on each other and why his preoccupation with questions about the organization of society led him to the primacy of economics.
The event is explicitly aimed at interested parties who have had little or no contact with Marx’s theory – this includes new first-year students in particular. We want to encourage independent and critical reading and try to show how reading circles can function as a form of joint but at the same time independent learning.
Feminist foreign policy – long overdue
How can we break down patriarchal structures and bring human rights into focus? “Feminist foreign policy” is a political theory that was first implemented in Swedish foreign policy in 2014. Since 2021, the traffic light coalition has also been committed to a human rights-based, i.e. feminist foreign policy. In this event, we would like to offer an introduction to the topic, read literature together and offer a free space for exchange. We would like to link all of this with current events and statements by politicians worldwide.
Let’s smash the patriarchy, together!
Frantz Fanon – Condemnation and reification?
Frantz Fanon must be considered one of the most important authors for postcolonial theory formation. Authors such as Achille Mbembe, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Edward Said, Homi Bhaba, as well as thinkers who are more remotely associated with this theoretical orientation, such as Etienne Balibar and Stuart Hall, repeatedly refer to Fanon. With his radicalism and unwavering opposition to colonial violence, he is considered a thinker who places psychoanalysis and Marxism at the center of his thinking for a black liberation struggle.
Above all, the catchy articulation of the experience of violence and the transposition of this to a dissident (national) communism has also attracted the attention of Jewish thinkers, which
has been little studied to date. Recently, Nathan Snaider pointed out in his new book “Fluchtpunkte der Erinnerung” (2022) that a large number of Jewish theorists, including Albert Memmi, Hannah Arendt, Claude Lanzamnn and Jean-Améry, have commented on Fanon’s texts extensively. In this respect, the question arises as to how such a reception was made possible and under what conditions it took place.
Overall, one could ask what distinguishes the postcolonial reception of Fanon from the Jewish reception. This debate seems particularly interesting in light of the constitutive contradictions that separate
anti-Semitism research with reference to critical theory from
postcolonial theorizing. Without wanting to contain these contradictions and to simply do away with them, we want to explore Fanon’s central work “The Wretched of the Earth” (1961) in a reading circle. To this end, texts from Fanon’s Jewish reception will be interspersed in order to open up this little-noticed perspective alongside the primary literature.
In times of rising authoritarianism and a strengthening
social right, it is important to ask ourselves what we can do to counter
this? How can I be politically active without the state and parties?
In the seminar, we want to get to know different forms of organization
together that do not focus on the state, elections and parties, but on self-organization and mutual help. Political organization is always caught between the poles of individuality and collectivity. Anti-authoritarian, anarchist ideas are an attempt to reconcile both. In the seminar, we want to explore these perspectives together and discuss them. What does this mean for our everyday lives and how we want to live together? What are the advantages and disadvantages of these forms of organization?
History of feminism/history of females’ resistances
The history of feminism is often undervalued. Current resistance of females’ rights often focuses on current struggles and mistreatment but not on how many efforts already have been put and how the history can help to resist further probably more successfully.
The reading seminar would include 2 dates with the reading of feminist writers from 18th-20th centrury and discussion afterwards.
Performative approach to the topic of resistance
In this offer there will be 8 meetings in which we can explore the theme of resistance through the path of dance, the body, art. We can consider working together on a performance that can be performed at the end. Basically, it’s all about a meeting and exchange space for those who long for free space.
The body as a capacity for resistance, experiencing resistance, in contact with others, different forms of expression of resistance, against scenarios, for self-empowerment or in the end exhausting?
What triggers resistance in you?
What triggers resistance in you?
When, how, where do you perform it? What does it cost? Where does it lead?
How does it feel?
We will address these and other questions together. It doesn’t matter if you already have dance, writing, theater, art, music or performance experience. We work them out together.
We can use different methods, for example, we can take text as a basis, write creatively ourselves, use exercises from theater, bodywork or dance and experiment a lot.