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RA 6 Reading Retreat: Cultural Fundamentalism and the Rearticulation of Racism

When

Jul 04, 2017 from 10:00 to 06:00 (Europe/Berlin / UTC200)

Where

Phil I, Building B, R.025

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Cultural Fundamentalism – And the Rearticulation of Racism

 

2016 can be characterized as the year of political "earthquakes". The presidential election of Trump, Brexit and the rise of right-wing nationalist movements across Europe have challenged the existing paradigm of liberal democracy and have posed new political, social, economic and cultural questions. From a cultural studies perspective, these political events seem to have brought back culturalist discourses that draw clear distinction lines between “we” and the “others” on the basis of essentialist conceptions of culture that entail and legitimize discriminatory politics. In the case of Germany, for example, the new right-wing political party "Alternative für Deutschland" (Alternative for Germany) proposes a German cultural identity based on its apparently demographic origin and incommensurability with "other" ways of living. While this proposal is linked to a cultural re-definition of German identity, it is also linked to a racist political agenda that preaches for the closure of borders to refugees and rejects immigration of specific groups. Within the field of Anthropology, Philosophy, Social Sciences and neighboring disciplines similar phenomenons have been theoretically grasped and described in terms of "Neo-Racism" or "Cultural Fundamentalism". Since the 1980s several authors like Stuart Hall or Étienne Ballibar have studied and described new forms of racism that avoid the explicit use of a racist terminology, strip off racist theory and naturalize cultural differences instead. Within Social Anthropology, Verena Stockle has analyzed similar processes of exclusion and described them in terms of a “cultural fundamentalism” that negates the dynamic and variable character of cultures.

 

The aim of the upcoming reading retreat, organized by the Research Area 6 (Cultural Identities) and the ETRG Migration, is twofold. First, we want to gain a broad overview over past theoretical approaches towards cultural fundamentalism and ask whether these are helpful means for describing the contemporary phenomena. Is theory on Neo-Racism useful when encountering contemporary discriminatory practices? Or remains the analytical term Neo-Racism too vague when being applied to manifold forms of exclusion? How may cultural fundamentalist positions have changed and are the existing critical analytical tools still helpful when facing new political situations? The second aim of the reading retreat is to gain a first insight into the field of cultural politics and thus hopefully lay the ground for a future workshop in 2017/18. Important questions will be: How does cultural fundamentalism find its expression in (historical and contemporary) cultural politics? What are specific practices of promoting essentialist concepts of culture? What kind of cultural practices can critically encounter cultural fundamentalism?

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