beyond postcolonialism: the production of the global common
Is there a global common in the postcolonial world? Unfortunately, it seems all too easy to answer this question today: the global common is neither to be found in the old modern concept of universality - since it has proven culturally specific - nor in the normative equality of particular cultures that mutually recognize one another. Instead, it is to be found in the never-ending process of interacting and mixing cultural differences, a process we call cultural translation. This process has its own subject: a new homo duplex of our time, the one who produces, enjoys and theorizes this new common of a trans-national, global culture. At the same time, however, his or her political articulation follows the same old pattern of cultural particularity, in short, the concept of the nation-state. So the homo duplex makes politics out of what s/he culturally condemns. What s/he culturally adores is conversely of no political use whatsoever. To openly challenge this contradiction is probably the hardest task of our time.
Hito Steyerl
As a global working class, the working class of today is just as subaltern as the Italian peasants of the south in former times. Yet how can the people who are set in a transnational relation to one another by the flexible production chain of contemporary capitalism articulate their relationship to one another?
Ina Kerner
Critical Whiteness Studies are a flourishing project – both within the academy and beyond. Drawing on current publications in this field in German, and focusing on the notions of whiteness and of white privilege which are employed here, Ina points to some of the particular strenghts, as well as to current limits of the whiteness debate.
Isabell Lorey
Zur Unterscheidung zwischen Norm und Normalisierung
Ein zentrales Thema der Kritischen Weißseinsforschung ist die Problematisierung von Privilegien. Doch in ihrer auf Normen fokussierten Analyse inthronisiert sie nicht selten erneut ein weißes Subjekt zur eigenen Immunisierung.
Nikita Dhawan
Migrant Hybridism versus Subalternity
What are the consequences of a “discursive colonization” of subalternity by metropolitan postcolonialism? Is there a conflict of interest between migrant hybridism located in the “first world” and the indigenous subaltern woman in the rural “third world”. What is the postcolonial feminist to do in the face of her complicity in the failure of decolonisation? These are challenging questions that need to be addressed in the German-speaking context.
Vera Tollmann
Das globale Gemeinsame im Internet muss erst übersetzt werden
Da das digitale globale Gemeinsame nicht für alle erreichbar oder gleich bedeutend ist, also nicht von einer globalen Gesellschaft genutzt werden kann, weil das angebotene Wissen etwa nie für alle von Interesse ist, von allen verstanden werden kann und schlicht und einfach für einen Großteil nicht zugänglich ist, bleibt es ein uneingelöstes Versprechen.
Brigitta Kuster & Moise Merlin Mabouna
Videoloop, 7 min., 2006
Welche Perspektiven ergeben sich aus den Re-Präsenzen der Kolonialgeschichte in der Migration? „Note d’intention“ zu einem Videoprojekt von Brigitta Kuster und Moise Merlin Mabouna.
Hito Steyerl
Postcolonial Critique
The debate on cultural globalization also often involves so-called postcolonial theory. What does this encompass?

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critique of culturalisation processes of social recomposition beyond postcolonialism: the production of the global common practices of multilinguality vs. national language-policies all texts...

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