Events

The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events

Thursday, 17 July 2025, 11:00
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg

Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University
FKH colloquium

Paul Lichterman (University of Southern California, Los Angeles)
»Perilous, imperative talk: the moralization of speech in white American anti-racism«

Abstract
White anti-racists have fashioned a movement that relies on tremendous verbal acuity. Why does elaborate, intensively self-reflexive articulation matter so much, even when it can be uncomfortable or forbidding? Critics consider these speech habits central to an elitist, »woke« culture that anti-racists share with other US political progressives—a culture that federal policies are aiming to vanish from public life. Academic observers trace anti-racists’ distinctive speech habits to their social status interests, irrational moralism or intellectual mistakes. I propose instead that many white anti-racists cultivate special speech as part of a long-term moral commitment that includes a distinctive theory of language itself. I listen closely to patterns of interaction in three sites of white anti-racism, informed by work in sociology of morality and linguistic anthropology.

The speaker
Paul Lichterman is Professor of Sociology and Religion at the University of Southern California. His research inquires into how civic actors define public issues and organize collective action to address them in a socially unequal, culturally diverse society. As a Humboldt Research Fellow, he is currently working at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften at the invitation of Ferdinand Sutterlüty, Professor of Sociology at Goethe University Frankfurt..

Participation
Closed event. Contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de

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The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events

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