Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften

Alenka Ambrož

Postdoctoral Fellow

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

September 2023–August 2024

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:

»Democracy, Reason and Madness: Relational Pathologies and ›Communities of Care‹ in the Atlantic World«

Project outline:

The objective of this postdoctoral project is to investigate reason and madness as political categories in the context of the Atlantic world. As a space of a constant struggle for democracy as well as of intense migrations, both forced and voluntary, the Atlantic has been perceived in the twentieth century as a laboratory of pathologies of relations. Authors such as Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Franco Basaglia and W.E.B. Du Bois proposed philosophical, psychiatric and sociological diagnosis of these pathologies, sharing the conviction that »psychic is political«. Taking into account phenomena such as colonial legacy and systemic racism, they examined ways in which systems of discrimination and oppression create mental fragility on the side of both the oppressor and the oppressed. Following their diagnoses and placing them within wider traditions of critical theory and phenomenological psychiatry, the project aims to identify a shared paradigm of »care of the relation«, resulting in »communities of care«, where aesthetic education meets democratic engagement. (Alenka Ambrož)

Research partner:

Alenka Ambrož is a fellow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften at the invitation of research focus Forschungsschwerpunktes »Democratic Vistas: Reflections on the Atlantic World«

Scholarly profile of Alenka Ambrož

Alenka Ambrož received her PhD in philosophy at École Normale Superieure in Paris (ENS) in 2021. In her thesis on The Concept of Relation in Philosophy of Translation, she explored epistemic, ethical and political stakes of intercultural translation from a postcolonial perspective. Originally from Ljubljana, Slovenia, she studied at the University of Ljubljana, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). She lectured at Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle University and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe and at the University of Nova Gorica. She also collaborated with the Institute for Criminology at the Faculty of Law, Ljubljana. In 2022/2023, she held a visiting scholarship at the French department of Columbia University, New York. Her current research focuses on questions of emergency politics, democracy and mental health.

Main areas of research:

Political philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology

Selected publications:

»La traduction, l’éthique et l’imprévisible relation : Repenser la traduction avec Édouard Glissant« (engl.: »Translation, Ethics and the Unpredictable Relation: Rethinking Translation with Édouard Glissant«), in: Revue des Sciences Humaines, June 2023.
»La traduction et les politiques du langage commun en temps de crise«, (engl.: »Translation and the politics of a common language in times of crisis«), in: Crépon et al. (eds.): Politique des traductions, Paris, Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2023.
»Epistemološki i metodološki temelji Homo academicusa« (engl.: »Epistemological and Methodological Foundations of Bourdieu’s Homo Academicus«), in: Mladenovic et al. (eds.): Pjer Burdije. Radikalna misao i praxis, Institut for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade, 2023.

Alenka Ambrož

Scholarly profile of Alenka Ambrož

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