polylog 53
Sommer 2025
Dekolonisierung, Kunst, Wissen
Hg. v. Murat Ates, Amalia Barboza, Christoph Hubatschke und Ruth Sonderegger
Anke Graneß: Editorial
Murat Ates
Gaëlle Shrot
A world ‘Made in Europe’: German-speaking museums in the decolonising process
As the word decolonisation has entered museum practice, it is being declined in many ways. How can we reconcile the various meanings of decolonising with the institution of the museum? This article looks at the meanings that decolonisation has accrued in museums in German-speaking Europe, as well as the possibilities it carries. It first looks at decolonisation in museums as a project to bridge the knowledge gap around colonialism and its consequences. From there, it tries to explore the way colonialism influenced the way we organise and produce knowledge, and what this means for decolonial practices in museums. It then explores decolonisation as a project of power redistribution before looking at it as a project of justice and repair. Finally, it asks whether decolonising museums is even a possible goal.
Ruben Hordijk
Erzählung als feministische Epistemologie und Ethik der Ver-Antwort-lichkeit
Storytelling as feminist praxis and epistemology reconsiders knowledge as »spectral inheritance«, emphasizing response-ability to/through the past and the creative reconfiguration of relations with previous generations. Inheritance is not a property or identity, but an open-ended communal process of affirming the relationship between the living and the dead. This epistemology and ethic of response-ability is explored through the works of Trịnh T. Minh-hà, Gloria Anzaldúa, Fumi Okiji and María Lugones, within the context of a decolonial politics of language.
Luana Goulart de Castro Alves
Politics and art: the aesthetic regime of Jacques Rancière and the anti-colonialism of Zanele Muholi's photography
The article attempts to indicate the confluence between Zanele Muholi’s photographic artivism and some important aspects of Jacques Ranciére’s conception of the relationship between art and politics in terms of his notion of partage du sensible. First, an outline of how Rancière deals with the topic in The intolerable image one chapter of The Emancipated Spectator is given. This is followed by a brief discussion of Muholi’s photographic series Somnyama Ngonyama and of how its manifold counter-hegemonic and anti-colonial aspects dialogue with Rancière’s fundamental aesthetic ideas on sharing the world we inhabit.
Muhamad Abdelmageed
Demaskierung einer »kolonialen Machtmatrix« in der zeitgenössischen Erforschung arabisch-islamischer Philosophien
Since the dawn of modernity, the logic of coloniality has imposed itself on knowledge production in the Global South and East. In the specific example of Arabic-Islamic philosophy, three accounts by Dimitri Gutas, Ulrich Rudolph, and Frank Griffel are examined in this article to show how the »colonial matrix of power« (CMP) emerges in their works in different ways. From using »paraphilosophical« to describe later Arabic-Islamic philosophy, to the axing of entire traditions of thought, such as that of kalām, it can be observed hows, under the influence of a colonial bias, the body of Arabic-Islamic knowledge is misunderstood and its plurality of a rich epistemic interdependence is underestimated. A particular problem lies in the fact that Arab-Islamic traditions are analyzed, ordered and subjected to an ontoepistemology under a specific western notion of reason (cogito)— without being questioned. In addition to unveiling and critically examining these mechanisms, this article aims to contribute to a conversation that transcends the barriers and power relations between knowledge produced in the North and the South.
claudia* sandoval romero
Strategien der Sichtbarkeit. Eine De(s)koloniale Herangehensweise an die Kontaktzonen zwischen Peripherie und Zentrum am Beispiel der mumok Ausstellungen von 1998 bis 2018.
Strategies of Visibilization is a spatial installation that consists of the listings of artists who participated in exhibitions at mumok (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) between 1998 and 2018. The installation compares proportions of participation by gender and geopolitical origin. Drawing on this work, the following article deals from a subjective-critical and decolonial perspective with questions of representation, the relationship between the centre and the periphery, the positioning in the artistic field, and power relationships within the museological and social context. The proposal also seeks to contribute to the debates about loss, mourning, and restitution of women in the Global South who have been denied a position in the art field.
Forum
Dominik Reisinger
Die Architektur des Tees Ästhetische und philosophische Betrachtungen zur japanischen Raumauffassung
This paper examines Japanese teahouse architecture as a dynamic convergence of aesthetics, philosophy, and traditional spatial design. By analyzing key elements—toko-no-ma, roji, and naka-bashira—it reveals how traditional wabi-cha aesthetics and the concept of ma enrich the understanding of space and time. Drawing on insights from Isozaki and Watsuji, the study explores the intercultural dialogue between Japanese and Western thought, challenging Cartesian separations and highlighting intersubjectivity. Terunobu Fujimori’s contemporary reinterpretation, the Storchenhaus, illustrates the evolution of these ideas in modern practice.
As an interdisciplinary inquiry it strives to deepen the grasp of Japanese spatial philosophy through multiple theoretical aspects.
Anke Graneß / Monika Rohmer
Valentin Y. Mudimbe und die Erfindung Afrikas. Ein Nachruf
Rezensionen
Gail Presby
Zur Dekolonisierung ökologischer Theorien und Bewegungen
Zu: Malcom Ferdinand, Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World
text (pdf)
Madalina Diaconu
Sprachen und Kulturen des Windes
Zu: Rainer Guldin: Philosophie des Windes. Versuch über das Unberechenbare
Stephanie Graf
Das Ethos des Trotzdem
Zu: Echeverria: Für eine alternative Moderne – Studien zu Krise, Kultur und Mestizaje
Namita Herzl
Von der Sichtbarmachung »nicht-westlicher« Philosophinnen
Zu: Women Philosophers from Non-western Traditions: The First Four Thousand Years (Hrsg. Mary Ellen Waithe und Therese Boos Dykeman, Springer Verlag 2023)
polytop - Stimmen, Blicke, Netzwerke
Ursula Baatz / Nausikaa Schirilla
Haus der Philosophie - Fujairah, AE
Vermischtes: Rassismus & Philosophie / Studiengang interkulturelle Phlosophie
Franz Gmainer-Pranzl
JUCO meets PLUS -Ein interkulturell-philosophischer Austausch zwischen Morogoro und Salzburg