Aktivismus und Wissenschaft I: Zur Theorie, Geschichte und Aktualität einer Provokation

Antiracism, feminism, the struggle against climate change, against social injustice, for LGBTIQ rights, and the admission and rights of refugees: almost all of today’s relevant political debates also take place at universities, in the sciences and humanities, and the science-related areas. Not for a long time has academia been so hotly debated. At the same time, “science” is being considered as an authority figure in public debates. While its findings are meant to guide political decisions, the political opponent expresses doubts in these very findings. Currently, the new and intensified politicization of science is summarized under the keyword of activism, a word that has become an irritating term through which different positions are juxtaposed and posited in increased tension to one another.

Terminologically, an activism that aims to establish political goals beyond the universities and sciences with the help of scientific findings can be distinguished from an activism that is concerned with academia and its institutions themselves. The question arises to what extent science can use activist provocations and interventions to better understand its central concepts and reference points: how do scientists understand their actions in contrast to or maybe even complementarily to thought, reflection, and criticism? What is their position on the political claim to power that is still and repeatedly associated with science?

This conference, which is organized in cooperation with the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (DLA) and planned to be the first conference in a series on the relationship between activism and science, deals with the effects of different forms of activism on the sciences and humanities and their institutions from the 18th century to the present. This observation includes historical stations of activism as well as present-day debates on the relationship between the sciences, activism, and politics.

Fig. above: Modernization of a lecture hall in the Ernst Ruska Building at TU Berlin, 2017
© TU Berlin/PR/Groh