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Events organised by C04

Theme Group: Critique, Institution, Affect

In this theme group we deal with the relationship between critique, institution and affect from an interdisciplinary perspective and ask which new perspectives on theories as well as on the social practice of critique arise from an approach of affective societies. This approach understands affect as a basic category of the social and thus also of critique and its institutional practices. For this goal, we will open up different genealogies of critical theory through joint readings, ask about its affective dynamics, and discuss different social institutions of critique, with a focus on art as critical practice. In addition, we offer space to discuss the role of critique, institution, and affect in one's own scholarly work through collegial exchange.

Organized by Aletta Diefenbach, Matthias Lüthjohann and Hans Roth.


Workshop Discussion: The Struggle for the Public Sphere. A Left-Habermasian Approach

May 23, 2022, 16:00-18:00, J32/102 (new room!).

Jürgen Habermas conceives the "structural transformation of the public sphere" as a colonizing encroachment of economic, political, and technological system logics on the lifeworld. Thus, the lifeworld conflict about the public sphere itself gets out of focus. But his work also contains another perspective that has been forgotten. It makes this conflict visible as a dialectic of systematically distorted communication. Current disputes about the public sphere, its boundaries, actors, and issues reveal the potential of this Left-Habermasian approach.

Victor Kempf is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin and author of "Exodus oder dialektische Negation. Paradigmen der Kapitalismuskritik im Widerstreit" (Springer 2019).

Lecture and workshop with Nitzan Shoshan

On the 23th of January 2020 Nitzan Shoshan, researcher at El Colegio de México, gave a lecture titled "Hitler, for example: affective registers of fascist exemplarity in Germany". Project C04 also organized the methodological workshop "Gefühlswelten von Rechts" on the 24th of January 2020, where Aletta Diefenbach, Tim Lörke, Nitzan Shoshan and Stefan Wellgraf shared experiences and methodological strategies from their research on right-wing movements.

Lecture "PEGIDA als kollektive Performanz. Die Dresdener Demonstrationen im Lichte einer theaterwissenschaftlichen Aufführungsanalyse"

Sebastian Sommer, doctoral researcher at the institute for theatre studies at Freie Universität Berlin and member of the working group "Right-wing protest mobilisations" at the Institute for Social Movement Studies, presented the results of his participation in various PEGIDA demonstrations. His approach is decidedly located within theatre studies and focuses on the protests' performative dimension.

Lecture "Das wird man ja wohl noch sagen dürfen - Über Hassrede und Ressentiment als Gefühlsszenario"

On the 29th of May 2018, Jörg Metelmann, professor for cultural and media studies at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universität St. Gallen, gave a lecture at FU Berlin. Particulary, the function and shape of resentment in public discourse was discussed.

International conference "Hass/Literatur"

From the 24th to the 26th of May 2018, the international conference "Hass/Literatur" was held at FU Berlin. On the invitation of Prof. Dr. Jürgen Brokoff and Dr. Robert Walter-Jochum, academics from the fields of literary studies, sociology, philosophy and anthropology convened to dicuss the relationship between hate and (literary) texts.

Lecture "Media, Markets and Psychology: Structural Conditions of Post-Factual Democracy"

On the 15th of May 2018, Mads Vestergaard, doctoral researcher at the "Center for Information and Bubble Studies" at University of Copenhagen and guest reseacher at the Institute of Sociology and the CRC 1171, held a public lecture on the structural conditions of post-factual democracy at FU Berlin.

Lecture "Only better Beasts: Emotion, Material Religion and the Scopes Trial"

On the 21st of June 2017, Donovan Schaefer, guest researcher at the CRC 1171 and lecturer at the University of Oxford, gave a talk at FU Berlin. Central to his presentation was the dynamic relationship between religious bodies and science and the role of emotions in this process.

Second Annual Conference of the CRC 1171 "Public Spheres of Resonance: Constellations of Affect and Language"

In cooperation with the Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin, the CRC 1171 organized its second Annual Conference. The focus of interest was a critical evaluation of the relationship between language and affect as currently predominant in Affect Studies, which primarily attributes a communicative and representative function to language. Rather, the ability inherent to language to generate affects and affective resonance, was emphasized by the participants of the conference.

International workshop "Inside Out: Affect(s) in Multi-Religious Secular Societies"

Projects C02 and C04 organised a workshop on the 4th and 5th of November 2016. International researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds discussed new developments in cultural and social sciences in the field of religious emotions. A main area of interest was the communicative construction of the "secular" and the "religious" as antagonistic poles of the social sphere.

Methodological workshop "Diskursanalyse"

On the 19th of June 2016, Project C04 offered a methodological seminar on the introduction to the Sociology of knowledge Approach to discourse (SKAD). Dr. Sasa Bosanic, researcher at the University of Augsburg, whose research primarily comprises sociology of knowledge and discourse analysis, first gave an introductory overview of the basic principles and concepts of SKAD. Subsequently, the heuristic instruments used in SKAD were presented and applied to empirical material generated by some of the CRC 1171's projects.

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