Philosophy of Culture - Prof. Dr Katja Diefenbach

Philosophy of Culture

Please note!
In the winter semester 2024/2025, Prof. Dr Katja Diefenbach is on a research sabbatical.

The main areas of work of the professorship include:

  • Contemporary French philosophy and epistemology, in particular post-structuralism, deconstruction and post-Marxism
  • Reception of French philosophy in cultural, postcolonial and gender studies
  • Concepts of culture, time and practice in aesthetic and political philosophy
  • Theories of transmodernity and transculturality with particular reference to the history of violence, (post)colonial and capitalist modes of socialisation
  • Interrelationships between European philosophical and colonial history
  • Theories of the event and the uprising
  • Spinoza research

There is something insistent in modern orders that eludes the reflexive organisation of these orders and forms their aneconomic remainder or irrecoverable surplus. Hardly anything is discussed more controversially in continental philosophy and cultural studies than the question of how this surplus can be understood and the extent to which it stabilises or destabilises socio-cultural systems of order, and sets cybernetic or emancipatory upheavals in motion. In this ambivalence-conscious perspective, the professorship team is dedicated to the cultural and continental philosophical discussion of transformative and transversal social practices. The fact that the concept of culture is used in the plural implies a twofold programme: on the one hand, it is a critique of those European concepts of culture which, since modern times, have claimed to summarise the entirety of the achievements of an epoch or a so-called people in the collective singular in order to justify ascending levels of civilisation, fictitious communities and hierarchical demarcations between nature and culture, other and own, myth and logos and to inscribe them in colonial-capitalist legitimation narratives. On the other hand, the plural of cultures affirms the fact that cultural philosophies have so far successfully refrained from prescribing a fixed subject area in order to instead analyse transformations of the social, cultural and economic in a pluralistic setting of approaches and methods and to repeatedly ask differently through which forms of exchange and value, modes of ownership and appropriation, knowledge dispositives and speech acts, rites and games social divisions are reinstituted or transformed. The professorship team pursues a transcultural and entanglement-logical approach that works in the context of (post-)structuralist, decolonial and (post-)Marxist theories. Upheavals are philosophically reflected on the basis of differential, often transcontinental contact zones in micro- and macrological dimensions and with special consideration of the history of violence, (post)colonial and capitalist modes of socialisation.

Secretariat

Elke S. Teichert

Office hours

Only by appointment by email to:
Prof. Dr Katja Diefenbach
Philipp Linstädter

Prof Dr Katja Diefenbach

Since 2020, Katja Diefenbach has headed the Professor of Cultural Philosophy/Philosophy of Cultures at the European University Viadrina.

Under this heading you will find detailed information about the professorship holder!

Professor

Prof Dr Katja Diefenbach

Office hours

In the winter semester 2024/2025, Prof Dr Katja Diefenbach will be on a research sabbatical. Consultation hours are therefore only possible by appointment by e-mail!

Team

Here you can find out more about the staff of our Professor.

Research and teaching

Research projects

Here you will find information on the current research projects at our Professor.

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Courses and lectures

Overview of current and past courses and lectures as well as an outlook for the coming semester.

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Publications

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Events and lectures

Overview of current and past events and lectures

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Doctoral candidates

Doctoral students of our Professor

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