Virtual Colloquium: Jens Balzer – “The freedom to become and the liberation from identity thinking”

We are joined on Thursday, 23.01.2025 at 09:30 a.m. as part of the Virtual Colloquium by Jens Balzer for a presentation titled “The freedom to become and the liberation from identity thinking”. „Freedom would not be choosing between black and white, but stepping out of such a proscriptive choice“, writes Theodor W. Adorno in his „Minima Moralia“. The deconstruction of binaries and of „identity thinking“ (Adorno) was once one of the central projects of postcolonial and queerfeminist philosophy. It sought the freedom of thought in the liberation from reified concepts, from dogmas, metaphysics, from ‘natural’ attributions of ethnic or sexual identity. But today, postcolonialism seems to have regressed to a „régime de vérité“ (Michel Foucault) that divides humanity into black and white and reduces the complexity of political conflicts to the opposition of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’, while queerfeminism has replaced the idea of transgression with the invention of ever new micro-identities. The euphoria for the becoming, for technology, invention and the future seems to have been replaced by the evocation of the past, of origins, of the indigenous. How can we return to the original impulses of postcolonial and queerfeminist theories: to the critical awareness of the fundamentally hybrid, diverse, ambivalent that precedes all formation of identity? Because only by understanding identity as fictitious, fragile and fluid at all times can it become an urgently needed alternative to the reactionary forces of identitarian thinking that are preparing to take control of the world.

Jens Balzer, born in 1969, lives in Berlin. He is a journalist in the features section of DIE ZEIT and the author of ten books on the history, theory and criticism of pop culture. His most recent book „After Woke“ (Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2024) was number 1 on the non-fiction critics’ best list of DIE ZEIT, ZDF and DLF Kultur and shortlisted for the Tractatus Prize for philosophical essay writing. His graphic novel „Holy, Deleuze!“ (together with Martin tom Dieck) about the thinking of Gilles Deleuze and the philosophy of mycelia will be published in June 2025.

Location, Date & Time:
Berlin Open Lab, 23.01.2025 at 09:30 a.m.
Universität der Künste Berlin, Einsteinufer 43, 10587 Berlin