Biographies

Aldo Beretta is a philosopher and political theorist. After receiving his PhD he has held research and lecture positions at the Alice Salomon Hochschule and the Forschungs- und Dokumentationszentrum Chile-Lateinamerika. Beretta has been political advisor for several governments in Latin America and collaborated with the UNESCO Chair for University and Regional Integration. Currently, his research focuses on the conflictual relation between democracy and capitalism. Based on the Habermasian opposed principles of social integration, he analyses social pathologies derived from the primacy of global economic forces over democratic institutions. Some of his publications include: “Handelsabkommen Neu Aufgelegt” in Lateinamerika Nachrichten, N. 533. (Berlin 2018). “Observaciones sobre la Crítica de Habermas a Marx”, in Constelaciones, N. 9, (Madrid 2017). Human Rights and the Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and Mexico, FDCL (Berlin, 2015).

During his stay at HSC Center Berlin, Aldo did research on the relation between democracy and capitalism. Here is a preprint of this work on “Democracy and economy: traces of an immanent crisis”.

Zhang Shuangli is a Professor of Philosophy from the School of Philosophy, Fudan University, China. She is now the vice dean of the School of Philosophy, Fudan University and the vice director of the Center for Contemporary Marxism, Fudan University.

Her main areas of research are Marxist Philosophy, western Marxism (especially Georg Lukacs and Ernst Bloch), critical theory. She has authored and coauthored several books in these areas. Besides these, she has also published quite a few articles in Chinese or English in the academic journals like Philosophical Investigations (Beijing, China), Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences (English version)(Shanghai, China), Critical Research on Religion (SAGE journals) and etc.

In the recent several years, she has been doing researches about the Marx-Hegel relationship and has published a series of articles on this topic, including the chapter on “Marx and Hegel” in Oxford Companion to Hegel (Oxford University Press, ed. Dean Moyar, 2017).

She has also written some pieces about China, some of which were published in Actuel Marx (France) and Die Zeit (Germany).

Ulf Bohmann is a post-doc researcher at the Chemnitz University of Technology. He studied Political Science, Sociology, Philosophy and Social Psychology at the University of Augsburg and the Fernuniversität Hagen until 2007. He received his PhD at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in 2013 with a thesis on the notion of a critical genealogy in the work of Michel Foucault and Charles Taylor, under the supervision of Hartmut Rosa and Martin Saar. Until 2016, he was a post-doc researcher in the project “Desynchronised Society?” in Jena, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In 2017, he acted as a stand-in full professor in Chemnitz. In 2018, he was a fellow at the Degrowth Research Group in Jena. Latest publications: Special Issue: Tribute to Charles Taylor, Philosophy & Social Criticism 44(7), 2018 (with Gesche Keding and Hartmut Rosa); Desynchronisation und Populismus. Ein zeitsoziologischer Versuch über die Demokratiekrise am Beispiel der Finanzmarktregulierung, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 70 (Sonderheft 58), 2018 (with Henning Laux and Hartmut Rosa); Kritische Theorie der Politik, Suhrkamp 2019 (edited with Paul Sörensen, in print).

Project description:

At the Center of Humanities and Social Change, I’m working on a comparative reassessment of legitimation crisis theories. The motivation to do so is to be more specific than the widespread but undifferentiated talk of a contemporary crisis of democracy. I’m assembling five pertinent approaches to the motif of a legitimation crisis, namely Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, Wolfgang Streeck, Charles Taylor and Hauke Brunkhorst. The goal is to develop respective profiles with strengths and weaknesses in order to have a sound theoretical toolkit. Furthermore, I’m examining in which way and to which degree the diagnoses of a legitimation crisis are valid for our present society. Finally, I will enquire if an integrative approach is possible and convincing.

Frank Schumann is a Post-Doctoral researcher at the social psychology department of the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin (IPU Berlin). His research interests revolve around the questions of how social reality is perceived subjectively and how this experience shapes social and political practices. To answer these, Schumann draws from psychoanalysis, social psychology, critical theory, sociology of critique, theories of social practices and sociology of knowledge.

In 2017, he finished his dissertation on the concept of social suffering in the history of the Frankfurt School which was published as Leiden und Gesellschaft [Suffering and Society] (Bielefeld 2018). He currently is working on a project that aims at reconstructing how sympathizers of social movements articulate and justify their political critique, and which notions of a social order are thus implied.

Christian Schmidt is a philosopher. After receiving his PhD in 2005 he worked as team leader at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig, and as Dilthey Fellow of the Volkswagen Foundation in the Philosophy Department at University Leipzig. He held positions as temporary chair for social philosophy at Goethe-University Frankfurt and for practical philosophy at University Leipzig. Research stays led him to University Paris 1 Sorbonne-Pantheon and the Centre Marc Bloch Berlin. He received the habilitation in 2016 with a thesis on Problems of Autonomy (unpublished). The Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities appointed him as a member of the academy’s Young Forum in 2018. Major publications are: Karl Marx zur Einführung (Junius 2018), Können wir der Geschichte entkommen? (Campus 2013) and Individualität und Eigentum (Campus 2006).