Op woensdagmiddag 15 oktober houdt Rae Aumiller op uitnodiging van SW*IP-NL een academische lezing:
“On Self-Preservation and Speaking Out: A Young Hegelian, Feminist Response to University Censorship.”
Date: 15th October 2025, from 4pm to 5.30pm
Location: University of Amsterdam, Universiteitsbibliotheek (Vendelstraat 2-8) in D2.08 (Ruyszaal)
and online (please email SW*IP-NL for the Zoom-link).
Abstract:
The Young Hegelians formed an underground resistance movement in response to the Prussian censorship, which targeted university student organizations and protestors who were identified as “volatile.” Two of its members, Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx, posed critical questions that remain urgent today: How can academic philosophy survive under the attack of government censorship and the university censorship of its own members? What is the cost of self-preservation under these conditions? When is it necessary to risk termination to stand against discrimination and save the substance of critical thought?
This talk redirects this Young Hegelian line of questioning to contemporary university censorship, which targets those labeled as “foreign” and the dimensions of our identity and thought cast as other. The foreign is portrayed as inherently volatile, not because of what they/we do or say, but because they/we exist. I offer a feminist defense of “volatile speech” that confronts discrimination, injustice, and violence. Emotional outbursts within academia and activism—expressing grief, anger, dark humor, and rambunctious joy—make it harder to ignore the insistence of life in all forms.