Events

Discover the Émile Durkheim Research Unit at the University of Bonn. Learn about our interdisciplinary events and research on contemporary crises such as climate change, wars, democracy issues, and digitalization. Engage with leading experts in meaningful dialogue.

Eine Wissenschaftlerin und ein Wissenschaftler arbeiten hinter einer Glasfassade und mischen Chemikalien mit Großgeräten.
© Axel Grundhöfer

Opening Symposion

The Research Unit was ceremoniously opened with an all-day symposium in the Festsaal of the University of Bonn by the Rector Michael Hoch and the University Attaché of the French Embassy Matthieu Osmont. The speakers' multidisciplinary reflections on contemporary crises provided a comprehensive overview of the fields of research and the questions that remain unanswered.

A festival of thought with Homi Bhaba
The location of culture – no location for law and normativities?

The past week has provided the Émile Durkheim Research Center with special inspiration: after Vice-Rector Birgit Münch and her team (Amanda Henson und Max Patzek)

succeeded in winning the cultural scientist, literary scholar and interpreter of our modernity for a key note and a workshop, it was a special pleasure for our newly founded institution to be able to participate in this firework of ideas and to help shape them a little!    

The selection of a thematic focus for the workshop led to an intensive exchange with all those who had contributed to a postcolonial view of “law” at the former Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities. Jan Suntrup, for example, in his habilitation thesis (Umkämpftes Recht. Zur mehrdimensionalen Analyse rechtskultureller Konflikte durch die politische Kulturforschung, Frankfurt am Main 2018), had already considerably broadened the horizon of the concept of law, thereby incorporating postcolonial ideas into the cultural studies analysis of law. Jure Leko has also pursued such a decentered view of normativity through the struggle for recognition of Sinti and Roma. Finally, the colonial history of France, the overcoming of a theoretical perspective centered on Paris and the question of other cultures of validity outside of and also in interaction with occidental legal cultures were of particular interest to Raja Sakrani. Among the Fellows was Upendra Baxi, himself a prominent representative of postcolonial thinking in law, which is all the more impressive in his person, as Upendra is familiar both with the purest of all legal doctrines, namely that of Kelsen, from numerous encounters in Berkeley, and then became one of the most influential representatives of legal thinking in India, in which colonial heritage, local customary law and international law are intertwined, so that the pioneering idea of legal pluralism has its starting point here. From the circle of Fellows, I would just like to mention Judith Hahn, Professor of Canon Law at the University of Bonn, whose examination of canon law in a global context offers the possibility of reapplying post-colonial perspectives to old Europe! More on this later...

Finally, however, the special role of Youssef Dennaoui's dissertation should not be forgotten. In his doctoral thesis “Knowledge and Power in Global Modernity” (Berlin 2010), he provided a deep insight into the significance of postcolonial theory formation. From Edward Said's study of Orientalism to Stuart Hall, Dipeh Chakrabarty and Shalini Randeiria, he had illuminated the environment of postcolonial thought, which benefits from Derrida, Levinas and Foucault's critiques, in order to fall back on autochthonous traditions with Franz Fanon and W.E.B. Du Bois, which lead to a completely unique constellation of theory formation in Homi Bhaba.

It was therefore not surprising that the initial question of our table, as to why he did not strategically start from law and the question of order à la Hobbes, was answered with reference to literature as the medium of knowledge more familiar to him. Whether literature is ultimately the better sociology is not something we want to answer in this generality, but it is obvious that there are paths from literature into sociological thinking, without Goethe or rather with him, as with Homi Bhabha. This has also confirmed our suspicion that Homi Bhabha's approach of alienating modern thinking allows us to understand our world differently. Including the law!

This was demonstrated by Professor Daisy Onyige, currently a fellow at the Émile Durkheim Research Center, in her contribution on normative stratifications in Nigeria, from colonial law to fortexisting customary law, international law and the requirements of human rights.  With the title: "Colonialism, Post-colonialism and Arab otherness : openess to the risk of identity", Sakrani´s contribution attempted to demonstrate the complexity and diversity of nationalist tendencies arising from or influenced by colonialism in the Arab World. In general, whatever path is taken to establish a free and democratic Arab citizenship of all faiths, stands today in the face of the observation of a great failure which has generated a serious crisis of identity and compromised the vision of the other. Finally, Judith Hahn's project, sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation as an opus magnum, dealt with an unusual view of supposedly ancient Europe, namely canon law, i.e. the legal order that permeates the world empire of Catholicism from Rome. But just as a McDonald's in Tokyo tastes different from one in Moscow, the implementation of the normative orders of the Ecclesia in Mexico and the Netherlands, in Italy and Germany, in Colombia and the USA is by no means identical. In other words, we can expect a kind of scholarly revolution in the understanding of canon law that makes use of post-colonial figures of thought.

Finally, Didem Ünüvar once again reached beyond the law to the constitution of an unresolved modernity: she raised the fundamental question: is the favorite concept of “hybridity” and the “third space” still relevant at all in the face of a movement towards “stable”, essentialist identities, spatial unity as the dominant motif of war and a return of nationalisms and identity politics? Her core example of the doner kebab was entertaining. It exists neither in Turkey nor in the imaginary eating community in Germany, but only as a hybrid product of a migration situation, which was vividly described by Didem Ünüvar.

In the final round with Homi Bhabha, it was insisted that the normative dimension - with Homi Bhabha's tools of thought - deserves another level of attention, but can perhaps benefit precisely from moments of thought that Homi Bhabha had developed in his key note the day before: Not to buckle before the question of “just” and “unjust”, to read George Floyd's physical posture, which ultimately led to his death under the kneeling pressure of the police in Minneapolis, as a juridical sign, to devote new attention to the category of “loss” and to trust one's senses in the process...

Just as tasting wine releases an aroma that sets the senses free, Bruno Latour, mentioned by Homi Bhaba and recently deceased, who came from a family of wine merchants in Beaune, Bourgogne - and one could add Montesquieu or Bernard Heidsieck - may also have been inspired by wine. Thus, the analysis of our time, which was by no means wine-obsessed, was based on a deep conviction that we are not completely lost in unhappy times of polycrises. I also saw this as a lesson to the Émile Durkheim crisis analysis research center!        

Kontakt

Prof. Dr. jur. Dr. h.c. Werner Gephart

Kontakt

+49 228 / 73-54 053

w.gephart@uni-bonn.de

Adresse

2. Etage, 
Argelanderstraße 1
53115 Bonn

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