Zusammensein

Writing this book about disability in this time and age is a personal as well as political act for me.

How do we interact with each other? In personal encounters. How do we perceive each other? What do we know about each other? These are political questions. And they reach deep into our personalities and our past.

Based on her experience as a mother of a disabled child, political scientist and author Hadija Haruna-Oelker examines German society in her new book Zusammensein – ein Plädoyer für eine Gesellschaft der Gegenseitigkeit (To Be Together – A Plea for a Society of Reciprocity). The lack of processing of history, German colonialism, and National Socialism continues to allow patterns of degradation and exclusion to linger in minds and discourses. How can we create a way of interaction characterized by softness, recognition, and participation, especially against the backdrop of an increasingly aggressive political climate? How do we become allies? How do we achieve a comprehensive understanding of human rights and to learn to ask what a person needs? How do we arrive at a  society of reciprocity where everyone can live autonomously?

Hadija Haruna-Oelker is a political scientist, author, editor, and moderator. Her first book, Die Schönheit der Differenz (The Beauty of Difference), was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. She now presents her new book Zusammensein – ein Plädoyer für eine Gesellschaft der Gegenseitigkeit at Ballhaus Naunynstraße.

The evening will be moderated by author Mareice Kaiser. The event will be accompanied by a deaf performer for DGS (German Sign Language) and two interpreters for (spoken) German and DGS: Charmaine Callahan, Paulina Güllü, Mille Skovdal-Jepsen.