Talk by R. A. Aumiller (Rae) orgnanized by Jana Cattien | Place: Universiteitsbibliotheek, D2.08 (Ruyszaal) and on Zoom: https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/82948697572

The Young Hegelians formed an underground resistance movement in response to the Prussian censorship, which targeted university student organizations and protestors who were identified as “volatile.” Two of its members, Arnold Ruge and Karl Marx, posed critical questions that remain urgent today: How can academic philosophy survive under the attack of government censorship and the university censorship of its own members? What is the cost of self-preservation under these conditions? When is it necessary to risk termination to stand against discrimination and save the substance of critical thought? 

This talk redirects this Young Hegelian line of questioning to contemporary university censorship, which targets those labeled as “foreign” and the dimensions of our identity and thought cast as other. The foreign is portrayed as inherently volatile, not because of what they/we do or say, but because they/we exist. I offer a feminist defense of “volatile speech” that confronts discrimination, injustice, and violence. Emotional outbursts within academia and activism—expressing grief, anger, dark humor, and rambunctious joy—make it harder to ignore the insistence of life in all forms.

R. A. Aumiller (Rae) is an assistant professor in the department of Metaphysics and Philosophical Anthropology at Radboud University, Nijmegen. They received their PhD in Continental Philosophy from Villanova University (2016), specializing in social and political affects and sensations. Their publications include Hegel, Marx, and the Laughing Matter of Spirit (Northwestern UP, 2025) and A Touch of Doubt: On Haptic Scepticism (De Gruyter, 2020). Aumiller is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Grant to Slovenia and fellowships at the Maimonides Center for Advanced Studies, The New School in Hamburg, and the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry. They previously taught at Columbia University and the University of Hamburg.