Normativity of critique – critique of normativity

Project management: Prof. Dr. Nikita Dhawan

Norms develop under historical conditions and operationalize themselves in different ways in certain social and political contexts. Accordingly, they cannot be implemented or contested with the same strategies in every historical context. Given the fact that there is no sure way to counter “normative violence”, subversion becomes an unpredictable effect. This makes the practice of critique particularly challenging.

If the primary function of critique is to enable autonomy (in the sense of Kant’s dictum of the “exit from self-inflicted immaturity”), postcolonial queer feminist theorists question both the coercive and the progressive aspects of critical research. If, as argued in Western philosophical traditions, enlightenment and critique belong together, what is the relationship of the postcolony to the legacy of European enlightenment?

The aim of the research project was to develop an alternative postcolonial-queer-feminist genealogy of the “politics” of critique in order to critically examine the relationship between power, agency and resistance. The focus of the project was on investigating which forms of subjectivation and emancipation go hand in hand with the mode of questioning and how these practices are to be conceived in the tense relationship between modernity and postcoloniality.

As part of the cluster’s overall project, this project examined in particular the ambivalences of the normativity of critique as a form of exercising power itself, thereby confronting the normativity of critique with the critique of normativity. It examined how normative orders are constantly denaturalized, but also reproduced, and how subjects with the power to act are constituted in these processes. The possibilities of thinking and acting differently, questioning the boundaries of the “political” and practicing criticism were critically examined.

The research project was divided into four sub-projects. In the PI project, the connection between “normativity, critique and enlightenment” (Nikita Dhawan) was examined in particular. The focus was on the ambivalent and paradoxical relationship between reason and rule, in which the promise of freedom of reason itself threatens to turn into a new form of rule. The second sub-project dealt with the question of how political subjectivity emerges in the space between passivity and resistance (Aylin Zafer). The third sub-project investigated how difference is negotiated and solidarity is created in the encounters between heterogeneous social movements (Johanna Leinius). In the fourth sub-project (Elisabeth Fink), the relationship between local and transnational labor rights activism was examined using the example of the garment industry in Bangladesh.

The research project focuses on the dynamic and relational aspect of criticism of any kind of power relations: in order to exercise criticism and create spaces for transformation, the resistant subject must relate to prevailing normative orders. Whether rejection or appropriation, a reference necessarily takes place. These processes were explored both empirically and theoretically in order to identify the potential for decolonizing alliances and to highlight the ambivalences of emancipatory desire and action.

The most important events in this project:

Workshop: FRCPS Chandra Talpade Mohanty Reading Group, in preparation for Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s Visiting Professorship for International Gender and Diversity Studies at the “Cornelia Goethe Centrum für Frauenstudien und die Erforschung der Geschlechterverhältnisse” (CGC), Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, December 12, 2015.

International Conference: Decolonizing Epistemologies, Methodologies and Ethics: Postcolonial-Feminist Interventions, “Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies”, Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, 2 July 2015.

International Workshop: Difference that makes no Difference: The Non-Performativity of Intersectionality and Diversity, “Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies” in cooperation with the Women’s Network of the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” and the Hessian State Agency for Civic Education, Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, February 5, 2015.

Lecture: Prof. Ratna Kapur, Precarious Desires, Postcolonial Justice and Human Rights, Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, May 27, 2014.

International Lecture Series: How Does Change Happen?, Cornelia Goethe Colloquium in cooperation with the “Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies”, Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, WS 2013/2014.

Workshop: Angela Davis Reading Group, in preparation for Angela Davis’ Visiting Professorship for International Gender and Diversity Studies at the “Cornelia Goethe Centrum für Frauenstudien und die Erforschung der Geschlechterverhältnisse” (CGC), Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, November 14-15, 2013.

The most important publications in this project:

Dhawan, Nikita/Elisabeth Fink/Johanna Leinius/Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel: Negotiating Normativity. Postcolonial Appropriations, Contestations and Transformations, New York: Springer, 2016.

Dhawan, Nikita (ed.): “Difference that makes no Difference. The Non-Performativity of Intersectionality and Diversity”, Wagadu. A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies, special Issue, 2016.

Nikita Dhawan: Decolonizing Enlightenment: Transnational Justice, Human Rights and Democracy in a Postcolonial World, Politik und Geschlecht, vol. 24, Opladen and Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich Verlag, 2014.

Nikita Dhawan and Maria Castro Varela do Mar: Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed., Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014.

Elisabeth Fink and Johanna Leinius: “Postcolonial-feminist theory”, in: Y. Franke/K. Mozygemba/K. Pöge/B. Ritter/D. Venohr (eds.): Feminisms today. Positions in theory and practice, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2014, pp. 115-128.

people in this project:

Project management / contact person
Dhawan, Nikita, Prof. Dr.

Project staff
Zafer, Aylin