Is it still legitimate to believe in social "progress"? Can we appeal to notions like "enlightenment" and universal "human rights" even though we live in a world where such ideals are constantly undermined-and even though concepts like these originate in a Western history of ideas that often has used them to degrade other groups and cultures, and to justify war and colonization?
These questions will be discussed when two theorists meet whose work could not be more timely. Rahel Jaeggi (professor in practical philosophy, Humboldt University Berlin) is a leading thinker in the fourth generation of the Frankfurt school. In her latest book Progress and Regression (Harvard University Press 2025, originally in German 2023), she defends the pair of concepts progress/regression as a necessary tool of social critique, while aiming to do justice to the postcolonial challenge.
Nikita Dhawan (professor in political theory and history of ideas, Technical University Dresden) is an important author in postcolonial and queer-feminist theory. In her book Rescuing the Enlightenment from the Europeans. Critical Theories of Decolonization (Duke University Press 2026, first in German 2024), she tackles the notion that Enlightenment thought and postcolonial critique are opposed to each other. Dhawan argues that Enlightenment thought has to be both criticized and transformed to serve as a necessary resource for us today—a project that she thinks offers fruitful points of contact with the Frankfurt school.
In conversation with Franz Knappik (professor of philosophy, UiB), Jaeggi and Dhawan will discuss how postcolonial thought and the legacy of the Enlightenment can talk to each other, and what critical theory can offer to our time.
This event is the second edition of the series "Critical theory in dialogue", organized by Litteraturhuset i Bergen and the research group Critical Theory Bergen at the Department of philosophy, UiB.
The conversation will take place in English.
