A presentation by Cengiz Barskanmaz, Professor of Social Work Law at the University of Applied Sciences Fulda. This event is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium under the cluster "Fundamental Rights and (Anti-)Discrimination" hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights.
On the one hand, National Socialism, and thus “never again”, has played a foundational role in the Federal Constitutional Court's jurisprudence on freedom rights, e.g. Wunsiedel and NPD II. On the other hand, the singularisation of anti-Semitism has emerged in equality law in recent years, together with the controversies around the IHRA definition (and the Commissioners to combat anti-Semitism). Considering these two observations, the urgent question arises as to how critical race theory can contribute to an effective and doctrinally sound non-discrimination law in contemporary Germany? To address this pivotal question, it will be necessary to engage in a thorough discussion of our various understandings of racism and anti-Semitism in the German context, which is deeply informed, shaped, and ideologically determined by the Holocaust.
In this this talk, I will explore how today's affective and moral economies surrounding the politics of memory impede a deeper understanding of race and racial relations. Not only has race been tabooed, but it has also been detached from anti-Semitism. Furthermore, I will outline the current fragmented jurisprudence on freedom of speech and assembly to discuss how today’s battle against racism and anti-Semitism is waged not within the realm of equality law but through the prism of freedom rights. To this end, I will present and discuss my thesis that while we are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the German Basic Law we are moving towards a discursive turning point that might ultimately lead to the collapse of so-called German exceptionalism, i.e. the historiographical ideology that constructs the “German context” as exceptional and Germany as a white nation.
Cengiz Barskanmaz holds the professorship of the Law of Social Work at the University of Applied Sciences Fulda. He is also project lead of the InRa study "Institutions and Racism" at the Research Institute for Social Cohesion. Cengiz Barskanmaz wrote his doctorate on the subject of "Law and Racism - the human rights prohibition of discrimination on the basis of race" and has worked both in practice - in the Mobile Counseling Service against Right-Wing Extremism and Racism and at the Open Society Foundation - and in research - most recently at the Max Planck Institute for Ethnological Research in Halle (Saale), in the research project "Conflict Regulation in a Plural Society". His main areas of work are public law (with international references) and empirical legal research.
Prior registration is required. Registered attendees will receive the dial-in details as well as a draft paper, on which the presentation is based, via e-mail prior to the event.