Phantombesitz: Zum Schatten des Eigentums, ein Gespräch mit Eva von Redecker und Nuriye Tohermes

The first episode of “Passage als Forum” — a series of talks, conversations and radio lectures centring on the vexed political and philosophical questions surrounding “Property, Appropriation, Expropriation” — sees critical theorist, feminist philosopher and writer Eva von Redecker in conversation with artist and activist Nuriye Tohermes.

Eva and Nuriye sit down for for a fireside chat to discuss Eva’s essential and provocative new essay “Ownership’s Shadow. Neo-Authoritarianism as Defense of Phantom Possession”. The conversation explores the historical and legal basis of our understandings of property and its problematic legacy in the construction of modern subjectivity, as well as contemporary marxist and intersectional feminist challenges to the property form.

Eva von Redecker currently holds a Marie-Skłodowska-Curie-fellowship at the University of Verona, where she is pursuing a research project on authoritarianism (PhantomAiD). Previously, she has worked as a research associate at Humboldt-University, Berlin (2009 to 2019), and acted as deputy director of the Berlin Center for Humanities and Social Change. Eva’s most recent book is Praxis und Revolution, with previous work touching on questions of social psychology, sexuality, and normativity; she has authored a comprehensive introduction to the work of Judith Butler as well as a monograph on Hannah Arendt’s moral philosophy. 

Nuriye Tohermes lives and works as an artist in Hamburg, Germany. In her critical spatial practice she conceptualizes and realizes collective, site-specific projects that deal with political and social structures through the creation of experimental spaces. ‘There Is No Time’ is a 48-hour video livestream of panel discussing digitalization, work, and the finance system. She was part of ‘Das Archipel’, a floating platform and a network creating autonomous spaces. Tohermes programs and runs ‘ZOLLO’, a space for art and discourse as part of the ‘ZOLLO’ collective. Her latest work is ‘PARKS’, a park negotiated, designed, programmed and maintained by an open group of caretakers in the industrial east of Hamburg, Germany.