They were difficult times when Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein met in 1981. Shortly after the Front National won their first important election, the themes of “race”, “nation”, and “class” assumed a new urgency throughout France. The sociologist and the philosopher seized the opportunity to discuss all three social constructs and their interdependencies with their students in a long since legendary series of lectures. The later book Race, Nation, Class: Ambivalent Identities (1988, published in English in 1991) summarizes Balibar and Wallerstein’s research and reflects on the connection between racist structures and now newly established global class systems, both past and present. The Cultural studies scholar Manuela Bojadžijev spoke with both authors about the book and why it continues to be relevant. To article...
When Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities from Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein was published in German in 1990, the reviews were effusive. At the time, the book’s interdisciplinary engagement with society was perceived as ”without competition” and “forward-looking”, however this was largely restricted to a left-wing, academic public. Decades later the migration researcher and journalist Mark Terkessidis has taken a new look at the publication, concluding that the history of its reception proves particularly fascinating, especially against the background of the debates on the concept of racism in today’s Germany. To article...
According to Maik Novotny the large construction site is obsolete. Taking a look at Rimini Protokoll’s Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle (Staat 2) the critic of architecture analyzes the struggle over the control levers of construction between top down and bottom up, problematic or merely simulated public participation, and the latest spectacular failures. A plea for the small building site. To article in German...
Major public construction sites are a phenomenon of our times. The costs skyrocket, politicians stumble, openings are delayed, the “general public” is no longer surprised by anything and is happy when something is actually completed (#Elbphilharmonie). On the occasion of the premier of the second part of the tetralogy series State 1-4 from Rimini Protokoll, Gesellschaftsmodell Großbaustelle (Staat 2), the American studies scholar Eva C. Schweitzer shares her thoughts on the complex network of relationships and the mythical value of major construction sites. To article...
Men are power, children mean power. Taiye Selasi, celebrated author of Ghana Must Go, opens up glimpses into inescapable gender hierarchies. Through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl The Sex Lives of African Girls tells the story of a fateful day in a village in Accra, on which male dominance unfolds in all its harshness, the more so as it is supported by women. The girl Edem has no mother, her auntie Khadijeh can’t have children of her own, both don’t stand a chance: “In the peculiar hierarchy of African households the only rung lower than a motherless child is a childless mother.” An excerpt from this story accompanying the Violence edition of the Dictionary of Now. To article...
According to widespread demands, school instruction needs to comprehensively change in order to prepare young people for a future knowledge-based society. The present is characterized by geopolitical conflicts: climate change, exploitation of resources and neo-nationalism. Social inequality is growing. What skills are needed to open up future perspectives? How can we imagine schools that take part in shaping a desirable tomorrow? Schools of Tomorrow author Keri Facer, Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol, and Sennström Professor for Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University, examines the challenge of rethinking the relationship between schools, society and the future. To article...
The political theorist Sandro Mezzadra on “globalization from below,” labor mobility, and nations’ double-bind with capital. To article...
The writer Rana Dasgupta questions sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos about the state organizing its own erosion and the lack of alternatives to protect our societies from the consequences. To article...
Class, race, and Pop: How a marketing professional in the USA invented the racial division between “black” and “white” music. The musician Dom Flemons, himself affected by this pigeonhole thinking, speaks about a little known aspect of American Folk music. To article...
How is an artificial Intelligence being trained? Trevor Paglen fathoms systems of intelligence and control and challenges our understanding of the distance between us and them: he is making visible the obscure and restricted infrastructures of massively data-driven state surveillance through long-distance telephotography of military sites, scuba diving into the depth of the ocean to the sunken fiber optic cables of the internet and their NSA wiretaps, and discovering the social implications of image generators like Google’s DeepDream. Paul Feigelfeld met him in his Berlin studio. An extract from the new HKW publication “Nervöse Systeme.” To article...
On conceptions of time and accelerated Capitalism: Guo Jinniu used to be a migrant worker in South China, where he worked at the Foxconn factory for some time. His poems reflect the massive transformation China undergoes since opening up to economic liberalism. To article...
Emergency administration of the moment versus history as a space of possibility: How can our society develop new models for action instead of just continually reacting to unexpected challenges? In order to answer this question Bernd Scherer has thrown a wide net—from contemporary history to military and technological history. Capitalism, technology and acceleration have given rise to an explosive amalgam whose composition urgently requires analysis: the present. To article...
Without an eye for the breaks, continuities, and ellipses of the past, the crises and conflicts of the present cannot be read. The project series 100 Jahre Gegenwart traces the powers of WWI in the digital present with an understanding of time that allows a perception of history as a space of possibilities. In a series of performances and lectures by the likes of artist collective Slavs and Tatars, ensemble zeitkratzer, or historian Jörn Leonhard time is demonstrated as a key to understanding. To article in German...
