GRCCCT 2024 – 2025
Graduate Research Colloquium in Contemporary Critical Thought
Welcome to the Graduate Research Colloquium in Contemporary Critical Thought (GRCCCT)!
The colloquium offers a bi-monthly online workspace for fellow M.A. and PhD students to discuss their research projects in the field of contemporary critical thought.
The goal of the colloquium is to connect students with similar research interests in the field of contemporary critical thought and social philosophy, in particular those working in the aftermath of two traditions of critical theorizing – the so-called “Critical Theory” of the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, Habermas, Honneth and others) and so-called “Post-Structuralism” (Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Butler, Rancière and others). The colloquium aims to create a discussion between students who build up on and engage with the theories and concepts made available by thinkers from one or both schools of thought.
Moreover, at the end of the academic year the GRCCCT organizes a public workshop at which all participants have the possibility to give a talk and discuss their research with professors from different disciplines. You can also have a look on the “40 years after Foucault” workshop the GRCCCT organized last year in Paris.
We welcome contributions from philosophy or political theory but also other fields of research (sociology, legal studies, literary theory, anthropology, art history, performance studies, data science, etc.). The contributions usually include a short presentation of a research project, for example a dissertation proposal, conference or article paper, or a chapter of a PhD dissertation or M.A. thesis. The presentation is followed by a discussion with the participants of the colloquium who give feedback. In the last cycle of the seminar students presented their research on topics like “Horkheimer’s Dialectic: The Ambiguities of ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’”, “Invisibility of Suffering – Conditions of Social Transformation”, “The Neoliberalisation of the Political as a Hermeneutical Hegemony”, “Mimesis and Paranoia. Epistemologies, Ontologies, and Ethics of Relating to Objects”, “Provincializing Europe and Deprovincializing Racial Capitalism: a comparative analysis between Germany and France”, or “Art, Praxis, Counterculture: A Comparison Between Adorno’s and Marcuse’s Aesthetics”.
In the academic year 2024/2025, the GRCCCT welcomes new contributions. We will kick off with a presentation of a paper by Maximilian Huschke on “Social totality and the dialectics of labor. Hegel contra Habermas.” on December 3rd, 2 pm NY time/8pm Paris time. Feel free to join and discuss their presentation to get a first impression of our research group. In the following months, every participant will have the opportunity to present their own research. If this sounds interesting to you, we would like to invite you to become part of our colloquium. Please fill out this form (2 minutes) and we will get back to you shortly!
Florian Meier for the Graduate Research Colloquium at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought (CCCCT)