»Autonomy and Opposition«
Thinking in a Bad World

We like to celebrate the autonomy of art and the impartiality of science as unimpeachable achievements of Western culture: as bastions against exploitation by economic and political interests. And yet, in a world of inequality and structural violence, in a time when racism, homophobia, right-wing extremism and religious fanaticism are triumphing, a retreat into a selfdetermined safe space of neutrality not only means a failure to act but in fact actively contributes to the perpetuation of injustice. This is the theory of Geoffroy de Lagasnerie in his book »Denken in einer schlechten Welt« (»Thinking in a Bad World«). Together with Didier Eribon and Katja Kipping Geoffroy de Lagasnerie is discussing the emancipatory task of intellectuals, the truth as a concept of opposition and the interdependencies of art, theory and social movements. How can we succeed in escaping the reproduction of a »bad world«? How, beyond the dubious myth of »the committed intellectual«, can we develop oppositional thinking, spaces and communities together? And how do we break down the mechanisms of social exclusion via which, rather than fulfilling their purpose as places of emancipation, educational and cultural institutions are instead producing an army of the marginalised and forgotten?

An event in cooperation with Matthes & Seitz Berlin.