Center for the Study of Paradoxes

The Center for the Study of Paradoxes explores contradictions, challenges, absurdities, nonsense or ambiguities in human life. The center conducts research into these issues of human existence, while also serving as a center for study and resources. The center offers consultancy projects of various size as well as public academic presentations, talks, workshops, and one-on-one conversations.

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The Center for the Study of Paradoxes engages the issue of paradoxes from a systematic theological perspective. The aim is not necessarily to remove given contradictions, but, rather, presupposes that contradictions can be engaged and explored and may even eventually be changed or dissolved.
 
The aim of the center’s investigations is to clarify the structure or character of various paradoxes, such as the difference between more immediate and more fundamental paradoxes or between destructive and constructive paradoxes. Thus the character of the various paradoxes under investigation is not determined in advance, but is mapped and clarified through the center’s work.
 
The center consists of a group of researchers, practitioners and students working together through cross-disciplinary meetings, the study of theological approaches through the reading of relevant texts as well as individual projects associated with the centers three central initiatives.

 

Paradoxes occur in many different settings and contexts. They may pertain to different aspects of our existence and can be approached from various angles. They may appear in the form of everyday problems, contradictions, challenges, absurdities, nonsense or meaninglessness or in existential ambiguities. They may have varied epistemic status, ontological dimensions and existential meaning. In our approach we are concerned with the connection between various perspectives on – and conditions of – the emergence of paradoxes. E.g. a theological paradox can be derived from psychological conditions that are not themselves paradoxical and vice versa.
 
This systematic theological approach to paradoxes draws on sources from the history of Christian theological reflection. In particular, it draws on the recent developments in post-dialectical and contextual theology. The center has a particular emphasis on recently developed phenomenology; hermeneutics and psychoanalysis with specific focus on the critical, contextual, embodied and inter-subjective turn within these approaches. Thus the center engage the issue of paradoxes by means of contemporary intersubjective and constructive systematic theology.
 
The center for the Study of Paradoxes is engaged in exploration and clarifications of contemporary paradoxes through projects in the following areas:
  1. The study of existence and lifestyle
  2. The study of Church and liturgy
  3. The study of social reality and innovation

 

The center’s approach to existence and lifestyle focuses on lifestyle as an expression of intersubjective, embodied and perceptual characteristics that often complicates, or even escapes, our understanding and thus questions our language and approaches to existence. This approach integrates and yet distinguishes itself from a recent hermeneutical engagement with human existence, which has predominately, focused on self-consciousness, knowledge and language. Presently the center is engaged in a number of concrete case studies as well as paradigmatic lifestyle paradoxes such as the contradictions between self-consciousness and forms of living, between knowledge and action, and between conscious and unconscious aspects of lifestyle

 

This approach engages Christian practices and liturgical practices as forms of life that are embodied, mediated and perceived, and experienced as ambiguous or even contradictory. The center’s approach presupposes that the Christian forms of communication cannot be isolated from their existential and societal contexts. This approach studies and analyzes in particular Protestant ecclesial and liturgical communication in its varied forms by drawing on the history of liturgical practice, ecclesial sociology and theory of ritual practice: i.e. church services, the handling of sacraments and other ecclesial practices. Thus the approach entails the study of a number of paradoxes related to the Christian practice and communication, such as the tension between presence and absence, the distinction between form and matter, and between direct and indirect communication as well as the tensions between distinct forms of communication such as the use of analog and digital media.

 

The center’s approach to the study of social reality and innovation presupposes the vision of society as a human community and innovation is an expression of society’s engagement with the contradictions that shape it. This approach seeks to clarify which contradictions prevent innovation and development and which contradictions promote innovation and development. The approach entails that social contradictions do not necessarily prevent innovation, but may, in certain instances, further it. The approach engages paradoxes related to innovation and development and problems such as the tension between society and the individual, between past and future, between normativity and experience (gender, sex, religion, class, race, weight and age) and, in particular, between children and adults.

 

Researchers

Name Title Phone E-mail
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Anne-Milla Wichmann Kristensen PhD Fellow +4535337882 E-mail
Dina Amlund PhD Student +4535321062 E-mail
Johanne Stubbe T Kristensen Associate Professor E-mail
Nete Helene Enggaard Associate Professor +4535337075 E-mail
Sigurd Baark Guest Researcher E-mail
Tina Folke Drigsdahl PhD Student +4535334695 E-mail

Contact

Johanne Stubbe T Kristensen
Associate Professor
Center for the Study of Paradoxes
Faculty of Theology
Karen Blixens Plads 16
København S
Mobile: +45 40 45 09 14
E-mail: jst@teol.ku.dk

Nete Helene Enggaard
Associate Professor
Center for the Study of Paradoxes
Faculty of Theology
Karen Blixens Plads 16
København S
Phone: +45 35 33 70 75
E-mail: nhe@teol.ku.dk

External members:

Name Title Phone E-mail
Anne Louise Nielsen PhD fellow  +45 353-20566 E-mail
Helena Hosbond Lange Associate professor +45 353-30148
Giovanna Barbara Alesandro Translator E-mail
Mikkel Tode Pastor E-mail
Tina Drigsdahl Pastor E-mail