!!Radicalism, legacy, and the future of the Humanities: An interview with Rosi Braidotti
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[Professor Rosi Braidotti|Member/Braidotti_Rosi] MAE reflects on her contributions to feminist philosophy, the evolution of the Humanities, and the importance of embracing intergenerational justice.__
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[{Image src='Braidotti_Rosi_01.png' caption='' height='400' alt='Professor Rosi Braidotti' align='center'}]
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!About Rosi Braidotti

Philosopher, writer, and feminist Professor Rosi Braidotti FAHA MAE is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Humanities at [Utrecht University|https://www.uu.nl/en]. Her fields of scholarship include continental philosophy, women’s studies and gender studies, feminist philosophy, and social studies of science and technology.
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She holds degrees in philosophy from the ANU and the Sorbonne and Honorary Degrees from Helsinki (2007) and Linkoping (2013). She is an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA) and also a Member of the Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies section of the Academia Europaea since 2014. In 2022 she received the Humboldt Research Award for life-long contribution to scholarship.
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Main publications: Nomadic Subjects (2011a), and Nomadic Theory (2011b), Columbia University Press. The Posthuman, 2013, Posthuman Knowledge, 2019; Posthuman Feminism, 2022 Polity Press. The Posthuman Glossary (2018) and More Posthuman Glossary (2022), Bloomsbury Academic. Her work has been translated into 26 languages.
Congratulations on the release of your new book, The Edinburgh Companion to the New European Humanities. How did the idea for this book come about? How did the collaboration with Hiltraud Casper-Hehne, Marjan Ivković, and Daan F. Oostveen influence the book’s development?

!Read the interview

__Congratulations on the release of your new book, [The Edinburgh Companion to the New European Humanities|https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edinburgh-companion-to-the-new-european-humanities.html]. How did the idea for this book come about? How did the collaboration with Hiltraud Casper-Hehne, Marjan Ivković, and Daan F. Oostveen influence the book’s development?__
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“''My work in the Humanities naturally evolved from my background in Continental and feminist philosophy and gender theory—though I now hesitate to use the contentious term ‘gender’, preferring ‘women’s and gender studies’ or ‘feminist theory.’ This work has focused on revising the academic curriculum to honour the great social movements of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. I worked in the Humanities alongside younger researchers like Daan Oostveen, a former student who is now one of the editors of [Future Humanities|https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/27702030], a journal recently launched by Wiley. Daan originally trained as a philosopher and a religious studies scholar and like me has developed a strong connection to the Humanities as a force for innovation and even critical disruption.''
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''My collaboration with Professor Hiltraud Casper-Hehne, on the other hand, emerged from academic cooperation and developed into a formal arrangement. We were both involved in European networks aimed at supporting or saving the Humanities. Casper-Hehne approached the Humanities through intercultural studies and the unique German critical experience, where post-war efforts have been focused on overcoming nationalism. Together, we became involved in the project of a world Humanities report that would cover various geographical regions. The study was commissioned by the International Council for Philosophy and the Human Sciences (CIPSH), in partnership with [UNESCO|https://www.unesco.org/en] and the [Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes|https://chcinetwork.org/about] (CHCI), which coordinated the project. Casper-Hehne and the University of Göttingen led the grant application at the Volkswagen Foundation, securing three years of funding to investigate the content and structure of the new Humanities. We also reached out to Marjan Ivković to include an Eastern European perspective. We particularly valued Serbia’s complex border-land geo-political position amidst Chinese and Russian influences and its independent, strong critical voices. Our goal was to build a coalition with diverse contributors, reflecting an openness and diversity in the Humanities. The core idea is that the Humanities are evolving in very productive and relevant ways, and it’s crucial for the old and new Humanities to remain open to one another and dialogue more systematically.''
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''During the many months of research, we spoke with many conservative scholars who, with a raised eyebrow, would often simply ask, ‘Why __new__?’ That question alone sparked heated debates: why do we need new Humanities? Why the emergence of fields like environmental, digital, medical and public Humanities? This proliferation intrigued us, and we wanted to investigate it further.''”
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__The book addresses significant threats to the Humanities, such as underfunding and political pressures. What do you see as the most pressing challenges, and how can the Humanities community respond effectively?__
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“''In the book, we deliberately avoid framing the Humanities as being in crisis, although personally, I’ve only ever known the Humanities to exist in a state of crisis. As a baby boomer who grew up in post-war Europe, I saw the challenge of de-nationalising the universities, particularly in my home country of Italy- and removing the traces of fascist ideology, also in the academic curriculum. Then came the nuclear era, the Cold War, the 1960s cultural revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and now the crisis following the end of Pax Americana. I believe the Humanities are always in a state of crisis, like a Socratic state of constant questioning and doubt. This is not a tragedy, nor is it a negative thing. In fact, the Humanities are a continuous exploration of the conditions of their own and of our existence as humans.
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There is a more conservative view that sees the Humanities as their own archive—a repository of canonical texts, foundational cultural references, and the moral-intellectual pillars of society. I don’t believe there’s a conflict between this tradition and the forces of innovation. Although in my career as a feminist philosopher, I’ve encountered resistance from the academic Humanities, as if a deep conservatism existed within them, I and my colleagues have also enjoyed fruitful cooperation and discussion. The recent edited volume is evidence of the extensive networks we have built over the years, across different constituencies within the Humanities. Such unity of purpose is important when the political context turns anti-intellectual and critical of the very existence of the field of the Humanities.
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On the methodological side, a crucial element was emphasized by German sociologist Ulrich Beck, who discussed the concept of ‘methodological nationalism’ in both the Human and the Social sciences. Beck explained that one reason the Humanities – especially in Europe- so vigorously defend their relevance, despite facing crises or criticism, is by claiming that they preserve cultural history and teach languages, which are integral to maintaining national identity. This argument emphasises the importance of the Humanities, asserting that without them, national identity would be lost. However, while this ‘methodological nationalism’ can be a strength, it can also be a weakness. It can easily shift into a conversation about nationalism or even ideas of national, or Eurocentric, superiority, sponsored by authoritarian political forces.
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My book [Nomadic Subjects|https://cup.columbia.edu/book/nomadic-subjects/9780231153898] is inspired by French philosophy, which challenges nationalism as one of the pillars of the Humanities. I advocate for a cosmopolitan approach to the Humanities—one that is open to the world and willing to critique our own history. While we have a rich cultural heritage, there are also issues we Europeans need to address. The European Humanities’ silence on colonialism and fascism has been deafening and has persisted for too long. This lack of self-criticism leaves universities in the Humanities vulnerable to the critiques we’re hearing from students today: What do we stand for? What are our values? How do we position ourselves in the new world order?
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By acknowledging our history and confronting difficult truths, we would be in a stronger position to assert that we – contemporary European scholars in the Humanities – are cosmopolitan, conscious, and committed to academic freedom. We engage dialogically with the world and collaborating while maintaining a critical perspective on all issues. This is the core value we all share as editors of [The Edinburgh Companion to the New European Humanities|https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edinburgh-companion-to-the-new-european-humanities.html]. It is also very much part of my ethical and intellectual alliance with Hiltraud Casper-Hehne: we think that the Humanities and social sciences are often seen as too pro-Western, with the concept of ‘the West’ being too narrow. My view is that the Humanities are deeply aware and conscious, proud of our past, but also capable of revising it critically and openly. We Europeans have a rich and diversified culture: we are assuredly the culture of science, but also that of colonialism. One does not cancel out the other; in fact, they often support each other. We must not simplify that which history has made so complex. Many of the challenges we face in the Humanities today come from within, as we discuss in the book, but there are also external threats. This is not a moment of crisis, but rather one of great opportunities—an opportunity to be bold and innovative.
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These are the immediate challenges. Then there are the epistemic ones we discuss in the book. We have highly advanced technologies, with AI almost epitomising this progress, yet alongside this, we face severe environmental degradation, deep social divisions, and vast economic inequalities. This ‘posthuman convergence,’ as I call it, where the digital, the technological, and the social intersect in a divisive manner, is driving a major rethinking of what we consider the ‘unit of reference’ for humanity.
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This idea is closely connected to my work, and it comes through clearly in my contributions to the book, alongside Daan Oostveen’s. We didn’t coin the term ‘post-Humanities’—in fact, I wish we had another term—but it has become the label for this new proliferation of research areas. We question why new interdisciplinary fields have emerged to address current challenges, instead of being able and allowed to tackle them within traditional disciplines. This raises concerns about the rigid structures of the Humanities, rooted in their academic past and canonical traditions. In the book, we express also some concern about the growing number of these new Humanities, their substantial funding, and their limited connection to the traditional Humanities, which increasingly feel like a culture of the past.
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Our edited volume – over 400 pages long and with dozens of contributors– is trying to bridge the gap between traditional and New Humanities, encouraging readers to explore how these new fields are getting organized in their universities. Many are surprised to find that programmes like the Environmental Humanities already exist but are not widely advertised. While this shift is exciting for those who want the Humanities to stay relevant, it is also clear that it does pose a danger to the old Humanities. I believe some insights from the traditional Humanities should be carried into these new areas. We need more cross-references''”.
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__How do you envision the evolution of this field in the coming years?__
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“''I want the Humanities to survive and expand, but the current outlook is not altogether promising. We are seeing an increasing trend of closures and downsizing. The Humanities are being replaced by targeted courses designed for the new educational market, mostly corporate. This is especially strong in Asia, where there is demand for intensive courses on something called ”Western civilization”. This quantitative packaging of our complex cultural capital shift seems to follow the flow of financial capital, driven by where the funding is coming from: the global educational market.
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This reductive approach often also overlooks key aspects of our tradition, like critical theory at large. When speaking of our cultural history, for instance, I would expect my colleagues to highlight also the importance of emancipatory movements—like the suffragettes, women’s rights, anti-slavery, and decolonisation— in fact the whole tradition of human rights, as being integral to Europe’s legacy. We are not just a culture of detached scientific reasoning, but also one of freedom. There’s a contest over what truly counts in our shared European cultural history.
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This cosmopolitan, critical and creative approach is central to the ‘European’ dimension of the European Humanities, such as we present them in this new volume. And it prompts a critique of Eurocentrism in a balanced, productive way that opens up new horizons. Europe has achieved great things but also has a legacy of colonialism and fascism. It bears repeating one does not erase the other, and simplifying history is unworthy of good scholarship. As Europeans, we carry this complex heritage and should bring it into the future, especially as Western moral and political influence in the world declines.
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As China rises with its new approaches to science and the Humanities, I hope we Europeans can maintain a tradition that combines radicalism with excellence. Meanwhile, the future of fields like the Environmental, Digital, Medical and Public Humanities looks promising. We found that research budgets for these areas are on the rise and there is more focus on major global challenges such as vaccines, climate change, poverty and AI regulation. The EU has already led the way in regulating privacy and AI, preserving democratic values in these areas. I envision further progress, particularly by aligning Digital Humanities more closely with Environmental Humanities, examining the carbon footprint of our technologies and their costs.
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This advanced computational system, particularly cryptocurrency, has a huge environmental impact—using as much electricity as entire nations like Iceland or Argentina. We need to reduce such energy-intensive computations and question whether we really need these systems. There is an urgent need for ecological foot printing of digital technologies, especially given their contribution to social unrest. This is a job for the Humanities—to engage with our complex cultural legacy, making our archive relevant to today’s challenges. There’s much work to do.''”
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__What initially drew you to the field of Women’s and Gender Studies and feminist philosophy? Can you share some of the early influences or experiences that shaped your commitment to gender equality?__
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“''As a quintessential baby boomer, it would have been nearly impossible not to be influenced by the great social movements of the late sixties and seventies. Those were times of real change, with a generation rebelling against outdated stereotypes and old models that persisted in post-war Europe. Growing up after the war, many of us had had enough of the traditional norms still in place, of the heavy silences about what happened during the war. That generational call for changes naturally drew me towards civil rights- women’s studies and feminist philosophy.
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I began in Italy, where reading Simone de Beauvoir was a standard part of growing up—our mothers had her books on their shelves. Later, I moved to Melbourne, where I crossed a young Germaine Greer. At that time, Greer was campaigning to desegregate the Melbourne pubs, which, even in the early 1970s, still had separate sections for men and women. From there, I experienced the defining events of the era, including the anti-Vietnam War moratorium and the women’s movement in all its waves. I was very fortunate to have a wonderful philosophy teacher, Genevieve Lloyd, who has remained a lifelong mentor and friend. In 1984, Genevieve wrote one of the seminal texts in feminist philosophy, [The Man of Reason|https://www.jstor.org/stable/24435599], which was the first serious critique of the masculinity of philosophical reason. This bold work made her professional life a bit more difficult, which is extraordinary considering it was 40 years after Simone de Beauvoir.
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That ‘Reason’ is biased—toward masculinity, whiteness, compulsory heterosexuality and middle-class values—was something that seemed so obvious to us, young students. Yet it became a deeply contested issue. I learned an immense amount from Genevieve Lloyd, not only in terms of concepts and methodology, but also from observing her career. She had an incredible mind and career, but it was a constant battle to challenge the idea that philosophy might be more biased than white men had traditionally presented it. All the heads of philosophy departments throughout my school years were white men, with rare exceptions like Genevieve. It was a moment where feminism was circulating, although the reactionary forces were at work, and many people rejected it. Yet, most of my generation embraced it.
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Genevieve Lloyd introduced us to Michel Foucault as part of a history of philosophy class, specifically teaching [Madness and Civilization|https://monoskop.org/images/1/14/Foucault_Michel_Madness_and_Civilization_A_History_of_Insanity_in_the_Age_of_Reason.pdf] as a secondary source because it engages with René Descartes. I decided this was the philosopher I wanted to study with, so I rejected the typical path to Oxford, which most top Australian students took. Instead, I accepted a smaller scholarship and went to Paris. Simone de Beauvoir was then still around, as were the French feminists – Luce Irigaray for instance- and visiting American thinkers like Angela Davis, a close friend of Beauvoir. It was a golden moment when feminist philosophy began to solidify into a set of concrete, formal systems. As I was finishing my PhD, schools of feminist philosophy were being created, and my work was, of course, heavily influenced by the French thinkers. For me, it was a rediscovery of a discipline that had been largely hostile to the young, to women, and especially to LGBTQ people. It was a great encouragement to rethink many things—exactly in the spirit I mentioned earlier, revisiting the past while applying those insights to the present.
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In my studies, I became more interested in the specific brand of materialism that French philosopher Gilles Deleuze was redeveloping- through his re-appraisal of Spinoza and Nietzsche, among others. Rediscovering in philosophical terms the truth that we are made of the same fundamental matter—variations of the same fundamental particles was inspirational and liberating. While this is obvious in contemporary physics, it remains anathema in the Humanities to suggest that nature and culture exist on a continuum, and that humans are simply modulations of the same matter as animals, plants, and bacteria. That is the core of the posthuman turn.''”
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__Tell us about your yearly summer school, most recently titled “The Feminist Philosopher, the Nomad, The Posthuman.” What do you aim for students to get out of the experience?__
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“''I’ve been teaching the summer school for nearly 15 years, and it has served as my experimental lab. Although I continued teaching a bit in the regular curriculum, for the last 10 years of my career, I held the position of Distinguished Vice-Chancellor’s Professor, which freed me from most regular teaching duties and allowed me to focus on research. The summer school became my space to experiment with themes and methods that might have been more challenging to explore in the standard curriculum. We covered many themes of posthumanism through this programme, and until this year, it was a large summer school with over 100 participants. I worked with a team of tutors, many of whom have since become prominent academics and leaders.
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The summer school also serves as a fundraiser for the ROSANNA Fund for Women, the foundation my partner and I started within Utrecht University, to support women at various stages of their academic careers. Since 2017 the fund has reflected our commitment to ‘radicalism with excellence.’ As feminist professors and lesbians, we did well for ourselves as part of this generation, and giving back through the fund is our way of promoting intergenerational justice. This is especially important given the current economic challenges and the rising costs of higher education. Since we don’t have children, we see this as a gesture of justice. The summer school continues to fund this important cause, and the money stays within the university, which manages the foundation for us. If you visit my website, you’ll see how many generations of Rosanna Fund winners we’ve already supported. These women, whether refugees or local citizens, have achieved incredible things with relatively little. I want this to be a message to my generation, particularly baby boomers who did well financially: some of that wealth should be passed down, even if you have children and mortgages.
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This year, I changed the format of the summer school to highlight my recent [valedictory lecture|https://rosibraidotti.com/2022/06/09/recording-rosi-braidottis-valedictory-lecture]. Now that I’m a retired professor with countless things to do, my goal is to become a good ancestor. In my closing speech, I spoke about how to achieve this: embracing ‘radicalism with excellence,’ giving away money, staying sane, avoiding toxicity, and focusing on social horizons of hope—all with the aim of making a meaningful, positive impact on the world. This year, I reduced the summer school to just 30 participants, focusing on those who specifically want to work with me. My final book, [Posthuman Feminism|https://www.wiley.com/en-es/Posthuman+Feminism-p-9781509518074], is my parting message to the gender and LGBTQ communities: ‘Study. Read.’ I hope participants take away an understanding of generative radicalism, the importance of becoming a good ancestor, and intergenerational solidarity.
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I want people who come to my summer school to experience a different kind of radicalism—one that is generative, respectful of the past, yet innovative and courageous, and focused on speaking truth to the power we’ve exercised. I hope the school encourages people to think more deeply.
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Next year, I’ll likely continue the project on how to make yourself a good ancestor, exploring genealogy and the tradition of illustrious radicals—those who have shown greatness in handling critical reason. That’s my challenge.''”
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The interview was posted on the 9%%sup th/% January 2025 and conducted by the [Academia Europaea Cardiff Knowledge Hub|https://aecardiffknowledgehub.wales].\\ For further information please contact [AECardiffHub@cardiff.ac.uk|mailto:AECardiffHub@cardiff.ac.uk].
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