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Peripheral Futures Is Anti-Colonial Social Theory Critical Theory? Some Observations

  • Date in the past
  • Wednesday, 17 June 2026, 18:00 - 20:00
  • Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies, Seminargebäude, CATS Auditorium (R. 010.01.05), Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg
    • Dr. Sujata Patel, Universität Freiburg, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

  • Address

    Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies
    Seminargebäude
    CATS Auditorium (R. 010.01.05)
    Voßstraße 2
    69115 Heidelberg

  • Organizer

  • Event Type

    Series of events

    Talk

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All Dates of the Event 'Peripheral Futures – Reading History from the “Margins”'

Where is future created? Based on some of the research done in the Thematic Research Network “Denk(t)räume–(Re)thinking and Building Futures” and at CAPAS, the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Heidelberg University, this event series takes the question of building futures from the margins as its starting point for a review of some of the seminal literature in global history. The aim is to foreground marginalized sources (material peripheries, e.g., the “un-disciplined" knowledge produced by the arts), positions (socio-political pheripheries, e.g., that of indigenous protesters), and regions of the world (spatial peripheries, e.g., parts of the world that do not make headline news) as well as specific times (chronological pheripheries: questioning why there may be a privileging of specific periods in time while neglecting others). 

In taking what is read as “marginal”, its voices and sources seriously, and by including artistic and activist resources, this series offers an intervention to established academic reasoning: at a time when apocalyptic narratives and authoritarian visions of the future dominate public discourse, the events focus on different forms of “critical hope” that can emerge in times of crisis: analytically grounded, socially engaged, and convinced that a diverse, collectively shaped future arises from the productive tension between different worldviews, the event series sets out to test out transcultural perspectives on and alternative approaches to the writing of histories (of and for the future).

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