Project Staff "LOOP"
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GB 2/33
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Nils Riecken is postdoctoral research fellow in the ERC-funded project “Late Ottoman Palestinians: Social and Cultural Dynamics in an Eastern Mediterranean Society during the Age of Empire, 1880-1920” (LOOP) and teaches at the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies. After his graduate studies at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies he submitted his PhD-dissertation Abdallah Laroui and the Location of History: An Intellectual Biography at the Institute for Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. In this study he interprets the contemporary Moroccan intellectual, historian, and novelist Abdallah Laroui (*1933) as a theorist contributing to local, regional, and global debates. From 2011 until 2012 he was the academic assistant to the directorate of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. He subsequently worked as pre-doc and post-doc in the DFG-research group “Actors of cultural globalization” and the ZMO-research group “Trajectories of Knowledge” on the global biography of the Iraqi nationalist, propagandist, and journalist Yunis Bahri (d. 1979). In 2016 and from 2020 through 2021 he has substituted the Chair of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität, Berlin. He is a member of the DFG-network Philosophy in the Modern Islamic World, which is based at the RUB, and the Working Group „Postcolonial Perspectives“ within the DAVO.
Nils Riecken’s research and teaching has focused on the production of knowledge as social practice and active interpretative strategy of actors regarding relations to the self and the world within (post)colonial contexts of the Arab region. His main areas of interest in both research and teaching have been political philosophy, the theory of history, and cultural theory in modern Arab thought. Furthermore, he has worked on the history of anticolonial Arab nationalism. In his new project Nils Riecken analyzes practices of census-taking in late Ottoman Palestine (1880-1920) as a modern technology of rule through which the state produced both itself and the inhabitants of Palestine as an object of knowledge and intervention.
Monographs
“Abdallah Laroui and the Location of History. An Intellectual Biography“, Dissertation, Mikrofiche-publication, Freie Universität Berlin 2018.
(book contract) “Abdallah Laroui and the Location of History: a Postfoundationalist Perspective on Islam, Modernity, and Time”, in the series “Contemporary Thought in the Islamic World”, ed. by Carool Kersten)
Edited volumes
with Heike Liebau, Special issue “Relational Lives – Historical Subjectivities in Global Perspective”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 45, no. 3 (2019).
Peer-reviewed articles
“Heterotemporality, the Islamic Tradition, and the Political: Laroui’s Concept of the Antinomy of History”, History and Theory, Theme Issue “Islamic Pasts: Histories, Concepts, Interventions” 57, no. 4 (2019): 132-153.
“Introduction: Relational Lives – Historical Subjectivities in Global Perspective”, Geschichte und Gesellschaft (Sonderheft Relational Lives – Historical Subjectivities in Global Perspective) 45, no. 3 (2019): 325-340.
“Practices of Timing and Critical Subjectivity. Abdallah Laroui’s Metafictional Autobiography and the Antinomy of History,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft (Sonderheft Relational Lives – Historical Subjectivities in Global Perspective) 45, no. 3 (2019): 362-381.
“Modernity, Ḥadātha, and Modernité in the Works of Abdallah Laroui”, Contributions to the History of Concepts 14, no. 2 (2019): 67-90.
“Relational Difference and the Grounds of Comparison: Abdallah Laroui's Critique of Centrism”, in: ReOrient 2 (2016) 1: 12-30.
“History, Time, and Temporality in a Global Frame: Abdallah Laroui’s Historical Epistemology of History”, History & Theory, theme issue 54 “Historical Theory in a Global Frame” (Dezember 2015, theme issue “Historical Theory in a Global Frame”) 4: 5-26.
“Frames of Time: Periodization and Universals in the Works of Abdallah Laroui,” in: Der Islam 91 (2014) 1: 115-134.
Book chapters
“§10.2 Abdallah Laroui.” In Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, edited by Anke von Kügelgen. Geschichte der Philosophie in der islamischen Welt, 547-559, Basel, Berlin: Schwabe Verlag, 2021.
“Interdisciplinarity, Disciplines and Temporalities – Continuity or Discontinuity?”. In Interdisciplinarity in World History. Continuity and Change, edited by Ahmed Ibrahim Abushouk and Mahjoob Zweiri. 1-28. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.
(under review) “A situated universalist critique of Western modernity”, in: Contemporary Moroccan Thought, hg. v. Mohammed Hashas.
Working Papers (peer-reviewed)
“How to Read German State Archives Differently: the Case of ‘the Iraqi traveler’ Yūnis Baḥrī (ca. 1901-1979) in a Global Frame.” In: ZMO Working Papers 18, (2017). 14 pages. http://www.zmo.de/publikationen/WorkingPapers/riecken_2017.pdf.
“Periodization and the Political: Abdallah Laroui's Analysis of Temporalities in a Postcolonial Context.” In ZMO Working Papers 6, (2012). http://d-nb.info/1026472040/34.
Interviews
“’Islam’ as an Epistemic Field: Imperial Entanglements and Orientalism in the German-Speaking World since 1870 – Interview with Nils Riecken.” In: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 09.10.2018, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/13722.
„Wiederkehr der Religionen“, In: Tag für Tag, 6:47 minutes, Deutschlandfunk, 7 December 2015 [interview with Marie Wildermann], http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/dlf-audio-archiv.2386.de.html?drau[submit]=1&drau[searchterm]=Tag+f%C3%BCr+Tag&drau[from]=07.12.2015&drau[to]=07.12.2015&drau[broadcast_id]=171.
Media publications
“Zeit für andere Relationen: die Aufgabe der Dekolonisierung, Epistemologie und das Politische.“ In Denkanstöße / Reflections, Blog by the DFG-funded Network „Philosophie in der islamischen Welt der Moderne“, 20. Dezember 2022, https://philosophy-in-the-modern-islamic-world.net/zeit-fur-andere-relationen-die-aufgabe-der-dekolonisierung-epistemologie-und-das-politische/
„Die Umklammerung. Die islamistische Idee von der Einheit von Staat und Religion verstört säkulare Gesellschaften.“ In: Das Parlament, no. 16-17, p. 5, Berlin, 13 April 2015, http://www.das-parlament.de/2015/16/themenausgaben/-/369300.
„Raus aus dem Containerdenken. ‚Der‘ Islam, ‚der‘ Westen: Die Suche nach einem ‚wahren Kern‘ verschleiert komplexe Zusammenhänge.“ In: Der Tagesspiegel, no. 22, p. 18, Berlin, 28 January 2015, http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/position-der-islam-ist-sagt-wer-aus-welcher-perspektive-und-warum/11289252-2.html.
„Berichterstattung über Charlie Hebdo: Islam, Gewalt und das Problem der Kontextualisierung.“ In: Al-Sharq. Berlin, 16 January 2015, http://www.alsharq.de/2015/hintergrund/berichterstattung-ueber-charlie-hebdo-islam-gewalt-und-das-problem-der-kontextualisierung/ (reprint in Jahrbuch der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Zentren Berlins (GWZ) 2014, S. 113-119).
Reviews and Review Articles
“Review Article: National Socialism, Islam and the Middle East: Questioning Intellectual Continuities, Conceptual Stakes and Methodology (STEFAN IHRIG, Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany's War (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), Francis R. Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014).” In: German Historical Institute London Bulletin, Vol. XXXVIII, no. 2 (November 2016), 63-76.
“Review of: H. Bock, J. Feuchter, M. Knecht (eds.): Religion and Its Other. Secular and Sacral Concepts in Interaction. Frankfurt am Main 2008.“ In: H-Soz-u-Kult, 06.11.2009, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/2009-4-120.
“Review of: C. Jordan, Kaderschmiede Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Aufbegehren, Säuberungen und Militarisierung 1945-1989, Berlin 2001. H.-P. Schmiedebach, K.-H. Spieß (Hg.), Studentisches Aufbegehren in der DDR. Der Widerstand gegen die Umwandlung der Greifswalder Medizinischen Fakultät in eine militärisch-medizinische Ausbildungsstätte im Jahr 1955, Stuttgart 2001.“ In: Die Politische Meinung, 48 (2003), 408, pp. 65-66.
Conference reports
(with Jasmin Mahazi and Kai Kresse) “Pathways of Knowledge, Internal Debate and Critique in Africa,” Nairobi, 2-6 September 2019. In: ZMO Bulletin No. 37, March 2020, pp. 8-9.
“’Islam’ as an Epistemic Field. Imperial Entanglements and Orientalism in the German-Speaking World Since 1870.” ZMO Berlin, 11.10.2018–12.10.2018, Berlin.” In: H-Soz-Kult, 12.12.2018, <https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-8004>.
“Provincializing the Social Sciences. International Workshop, 04.06.2015 – 06.06.2015 Berlin”. In: H-Soz-Kult, 02.09.2015, <https://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-6138>.
The making of the modern concept of Islam: a genealogy of a colonial encounter, kollaborativer und interdisziplinärer Workshop “Pathways of knowledge, internal debate and critique in Africa: a collaborative interdisciplinary workshop on theory and method”, organisiert in Kooperation zwischen Partnern in Berlin und Ostafrika, Nairobi, 2.-6. September 2019 (eingeladen).
Translating modernity: Abdallah Laroui on the politics of historicity and situated universalism, internationale Abschlusskonferenz Konferenz “Claiming and Making Muslim Worlds: Across and Between the Local and Global” des BMBF-Programms “Muslims Worlds – World of Islam?”, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, 3.-5. April 2019.
Das Problem des Anfangs bei Abdallah Laroui, Reading Weekend „Perzeption der islamischen Frühgeschichte bei zeitgenössischen Autoren (mit Fokus auf maghrebinischen Autoren)“, Frankfurt a.M., 3. April 2019 (eingeladen).
On Tragic Temporality: Abdallah Laroui’s Reading of Tradition, Annual Conference of “Islam and the Humanities”, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, 20. -21. April 2018 (eingeladen),
Temporalité, historicité et la politique chez Abdallah Laroui, Konferenz zu Ehren von Abdallah Laroui, Rabat, Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines, Université Mohammed-V, Rabat, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, 18. Januar 2018 (eingeladen).
1917 im Nahen Osten: Die Balfour-Deklaration, Palästina und die Entstehung des Nahostkonflikts, Ringvorlesung „Das Jahr 1917. Auftakt zum kurzen 20. Jahrhundert?“, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 20. Juni 2017 (eingeladen).
Moderne und Islam provinzialisieren: Abdallah Laroui und die Dialektik von profaner und theologischer Zeit, Jahrestagung des Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, Berlin, 30. Oktober 2015 (eingeladen).
Modernity as rupture: analyzing Abdallah Laroui's epistemology of history as a postcolonial intellectual practice, internationale Konferenz “History and Historiography in the 20th century”, Universität Athen, 20. Juni 2015.
Historicizing difference. Abdallah Laroui’s epistemology of history and the critique of culturalist knowledge production, Workshop “Tolerance in Contemporary Muslim Thought and Practice”, King’s College London, 16. März 2015 (eingeladen).
Abdallah Laroui’s epistemology of history and the critique of culturalist knowledge production, Workshop “(De-)Colonizing Knowledge: Figures, Narratives, and Practices”, Freie Universität Berlin, 16. Februar 2015.
Multi-sited biography and biography as archive: the case of Yūnus Baḥrī’s career, internationale Konferenz “Networks of non-European actors in First World War and Interwar Europe”, ZMO Berlin, 16. Juni 2014.
Interdisciplinarity, disciplines and temporalities – continuity or discontinuity?, internationale Konferenz “Interdisciplinarity in History: An Old Method in a New World Context”, Qatar Universität, Doha, 6. März 2014.
Intellektuelle Praktiken aus globaler Perspektive. Methodische Überlegungen am Beispiel des Begriffs des Historizismus bei Abdallah Laroui, Tagung “Area Histories Transregional“, Freie Universität Berlin, 28. Februar 2014 (eingeladen).
Zeit und Zeitlichkeit in Abdallah Larouis historischer Epistemologie, 32. Deutscher Orientalistentag, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 27. September 2013.
Experiences of violence, tağāwuz/dépassement and universalism. Abdallah Laroui and the dialectic of memory and critique, Workshop “Trauma, Memory and History: A Comparative Reflection between Morocco and Lebanon”, Mohammed V Universität, Rabat, 19. April 2013 (eingeladen).
Secularism, Tradition and Critique in the Work of Abdallah Laroui, Polylog-Workshop „Postkoloniale Erfahrungen und Kritiken im transregionalen Vergleich”, 3. Interkulturelles Interdisziplinäres Kolloquium, ZMO, 13. Dezember 2012 (eingeladen).
Frames of Time: Universals and Periodization, Workshop “Arabic Pasts: Histories and Historiography. Special theme: ‘What is in a Period? ‘Jāhiliyya’, ‘ʿAbbāsid’, and ‘Arab Spring’ in Arabic Historical Writing’”, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan Universität/SOAS, Universität London, London, 28. September 2012.
Abdallah Laroui’s concept of historicism, modernity and the times of history, Internationale Graduiertenkonferenz “Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Contestations: Decolonizing the social sciences and the humanities”, Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies, Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 17. Juni 2011.
Abdallah Laroui’s perspective on modernity and history, Spring school “Global History: Connected Histories or a History of Connections?, Deutsches Historisches Institut London, 13. April 2011.
Abdallah Laroui’s perspective on modernity and history, Rabat Spring School, Institut d’études de l’Islam et des Sociétés du Monde Musulman, Netherlands Interuniversity School for Islamic Studies, Centre Jacques Berque pour les Etudes en Sciences Humaines et Sociales au Maroc, Centre Marocain des Sciences Sociales, Rabat, 24. März 2011 (eingeladen).
‘The Concept of History’ by Abdallah Laroui and the work of the historian, Workshop “Arabic Pasts: Histories and Historiography, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan Universität/SOAS, Universität London, 18. September 2009.
Co-Organization with Kai Kresse of collaborative and interdisciplinary workshop “Pathways of knowledge, internal debate and critique in Africa: a collaborative interdisciplinary workshop on theory and method”, Nairobi, 2-6 September 2019, joint initiative between Berlin-based and East African partners (including conceptualization of a panel on “Critiques of Modernity: history – politics – time”).
Panel “Intellectual cultures and philosophical thinkers in the modern Muslim world: hegemonic frameworks, conceptual reservoirs, and decolonization”, International conference “Claiming and Making Muslim Worlds: Across and Between the Local and Global”, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, 3-5 April, 2019, Ko-Organisation mit Prof. Kai Kresse.
International conference “’Islam’ as an Epistemic field: Imperial Entanglements and Orientalism in the German-Speaking World since 1870”, ZMO, Berlin (with Larissa Schmid for the ZMO-Research Cluster “Trajectories of Lives and Knowledge”), 11.-12. October 2018.
Workshop “Time(s) in Comparison: Transregional Approaches to Contemporary Philosophical Thought in the Middle East and South Asia”, 3-4 June 2016, Freie Universität Berlin/Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies/ZMO (with Roman Seidel).
Lecture series “Engaging with Contemporary Philosophy in the Middle East and Muslim South Asia Themes, Approaches, and New Perspectives”, winter term 2015-2016, Freie Universität Berlin/Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies/ZMO (with Roman Seidel).
ZMO-Colloquium “Who speaks? – The global history of intellectual practices: epistemological, political, and ethical challenges”, winter term 2014-2015, ZMO Berlin (with Katrin Bromber, Bettina Gräf, and Ali Raza).
Winter term 2022-23
Summer term 2021
Winter term 2020/2021
Winter term 2018/2019
Winter term 2016/2017
Sommersemester 2016
DFG-Network “Philosophy in the Modern Islamic World” (Link: https://philosophy-in-the-modern-islamic-world.net/)
DAVO, Working group “Postcolonial Perspectives“
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