Terra Critica: Interdisciplinary Network for the Critical Humanities

Utrecht University

Terra Critica is an international research network in the humanities that brings together scholars specializing in critical and cultural theory. Its aim is to reexamine critical theory and critique under the conditions of the twenty-first century–given our immanent, terran existences, globally entangled across flows of capital, people, and ideas, and living in ecological and economical interdependencies. Terra Critica wishes to strengthen the critical humanities as a crucial site for critical analyses of our present, meeting regularly for expert seminars and aiming to provide a platform for discussion, publication, and the exchange of ideas and knowledges.

At a time when the humanities are readjusting to their tasks in the globally entangled world of the twenty-first century–a century that inherits the various deconstructions of humanisms, colonialisms, sexisms, and racisms, as well as the many calamities that called for their deconstructions in the first place–practices of critique still seem crucial to the work done in the humanities. The capacity to diagnose social formations, eschew dogmatisms, and provide the tools for emancipatory social transformations is much needed in times when global processes are presented as inevitable and autonomous–as inescapably demanded by an economic system or as beyond regulation and steering due to systemic ecological over-complexity. The humanities continue to be the site where critical analyses of contemporary social realities are conducted, and where their techniques and future-oriented potentials are taught. And yet, in an increasingly interdependent and entangled world, we need to revise the traditional image of critique: the calm distancing by way of setting apart and judging. In today’s world, we realize that our evaluations and assessments, as well as our actions, (must) come about from within the processes of ongoing change and differentiation. What is asked of us today is a critical practice that affirms the situated nature of any diagnosis, yet dares to answer to the needs of terra critica: a world in critical condition, whose planetary connectivity calls for critical intervention and creative responses, neither relativistic nor universal, but with sustainable futures in view.

Información de contacto
Kathrin Thiele, Professor
Birgit Kaiser, Professor

Utrecht University
Muntstraat 2A
Utrecht, Utrecht
Países Bajos

http://terracritica.net/
info@terracritica.net

Región
Europa
Europa oriental

Año de establecimiento
2012