Luca Di Blasi – författare

We invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions, or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of depoliticization? Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst debate the uses and misuses of tolerance, an exchange that highlights the fundamental differences in their critical practice despite a number of political similarities. Both scholars address the normative premises, limits, and political implications of various conceptions of tolerance. Brown offers a genealogical critique of contemporary discourses on tolerance in Western liberal societies, focusing on their inherent ties to colonialism and imperialism, and Forst reconstructs an intellectual history of tolerance that attempts to redeem its political virtue in democratic societies. Brown and Forst work from different perspectives and traditions, yet they each remain wary of the subjection and abnegation embodied in toleration discourses, among other issues.The result is a dialogue rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity.

We invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions, or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of depoliticization? Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst debate the uses and misuses of tolerance, an exchange that highlights the fundamental differences in their critical practice despite a number of political similarities. Both scholars address the normative premises, limits, and political implications of various conceptions of tolerance. Brown offers a genealogical critique of contemporary discourses on tolerance in Western liberal societies, focusing on their inherent ties to colonialism and imperialism, and Forst reconstructs an intellectual history of tolerance that attempts to redeem its political virtue in democratic societies. Brown and Forst work from different perspectives and traditions, yet they each remain wary of the subjection and abnegation embodied in toleration discourses, among other issues.The result is a dialogue rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity.

Spätestens seit dem 7. Oktober 2023 rücken namhafte kritische Intellektuelle von der lange unumstrittenen, ja als vorbildlich erachteten deutschen Erinnerungspolitik ab. Sie sei »übergeschnappt« (Susan Neiman), von Rechten gekapert worden, habe in letzter Zeit autoritäre und identitär-ausschließende Züge angenommen – eine Entwicklung, die laut Luca Di Blasi keineswegs überraschend ist. Ihm zufolge konnte eine nach 1945 diskreditierte und unhaltbar gewordene Volksgemeinschaft im Namen der Schuld als »Tätervolksgemeinschaft« überwintern. Denn in der Rede von der »deutschen Schuld« waren nicht nur die Weichen für eine progressive, für kollektive Opfer von Diskriminierung und Verfolgung attraktive Identitätspolitik gestellt. Auch eine Alternative für ehemalige Komplizen und Mitwisser auf Täterseite schien auf: die Bewahrung einer kollektiven Identität im Namen der anerkannten Schuld. Diese »negative Identitätspolitik« wurde im Nachkriegsdeutschland wirksam.Anknüpfend an Sigmund Freuds Rekonstruktion unterschiedlicher Formen des Umgangs mit kollektiver Schuld in Judentum und Christentum zeigt Di Blasi, wie Schuldanerkennung nach 1945 zu einer neuartigen Form nationaler Identitätspolitik avancierte, – und wie wir ihre Krise überwinden können.