OTHERNESSES – is a workspace for critical thought along questions of alterity – haunted by the differentiation of what Hannah Arendt has called (Nach-) Denken (instead of repeating) and Gedankenlosigkeit (thoughtlessness) in and as (political) agency.
It is understood as a form of accountable thinking,
outside of epistemic violence (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak),
that first presupposes the others of the self,
rather than the self itself
(sometimes mirrored in art and literature)
beyond and despite all (hi-)stories.
(Which would mean)
to learn to read in order to trace
and find a form of thinking,
from all possible languages and figurations,
as archives of thought,
that is dedicated to values, ideals, and humanisms
yet to come
(considering also old ones)
ones that remain within our reach,
closing in.
It means imagining the humanities
in both its senses,
in the sense of learning to un-learn
within the humanities,
and in the sense of
learning to imagine humanisms
along question of alterity –
from different texts, languages,
by our sheer imagination,
in (re-) thinking
the new as old the old
as new for
other
planetarian possibilities.