Academy Lecture with Eva von Redecker “Nowhere to Stay: Who will we be if the swallows do not come back one day?”
“Nowhere to Stay”: “Who will we be if the swallows do not come back one day?”
What happens to us when the world no longer promises us a home? The figure of the swallow runs throughout Eva von Redecker's work and reappears in Ece Temelkuran's A Nation of Strangers. Swallows migrate over long distances, returning year after year – until they don’t. When swallows no longer return, it is not because they have chosen another home, but because the conditions that once sustained their return have been damaged. Perhaps this is what swallows remind us of: that we can become strangers not because we have left home, but because home itself has become uninhabitable.
As our ability to stay, return, belong, and feel at home erodes, another impulse is gaining strength: the desire to hold on to what remains using exclusion, borders, and violence. In her recent work, The New Fascism: Entitlement and the Urge to Destroy (Dieser Drang nach Härte), Eva von Redecker explores the conditions under which a new fascism takes hold, fueled and shaped by entitlement, exclusion, and destruction.
How can we respond? Alongside Eva von Redecker’s reflections sits Ece Temelkuran's recent book, A Nation of Strangers, which explores building a shared home in a world marked by exile, displacement, and growing authoritarianism.
Together, they explore what forms of home, belonging, and democratic coexistence remain possible under these conditions.
Following the lecture, Eva von Redecker will be joined by Ece Temelkuran in conversation.
Opening remarks will be given by Grzegorz Nocko, Director of the Robert Bosch Academy.
Eva von Redecker is a philosopher and freelance author. After periods spent at Humboldt University, Cambridge University, University of Verona and the New School for Social Research in New York, she now writes articles for publications including Die Zeit. Eva von Redecker’s work focuses on critical theory, feminism, and critiques of capitalism. Her most recent publications are The Freedom to Stay (2023) and Revolution for Life (2020), she also provided the foreword to the German anniversary edition of Dialectic of Enlightenment. She grew up on an organic farm, and now lives in rural Brandenburg.
Ece Temelkuran is an acclaimed Turkish novelist, political thinker, public speaker, and a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow. Her articles have been featured in several international media outlets, including the New York Times, The Guardian, and Le Monde. Temelkuran has received numerous awards for her work. Her novel, Women Who Blow On Knots, won the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book award, and her book Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy earned her the Ambassador Of New Europe Award. She also received the El Mundo Journalism Award for her collective body of work. Her book, How to Lose a Country Together: A Manifesto Against the Heartless World, has gained international recognition and has been translated into multiple languages. In addition to her writing, she has held several prestigious fellowships. She was a visiting fellow at Saint Anthony's College, Oxford, and a fellow at The New Institute in Hamburg. She is also a member of the advisory boards for Progressive International and Democracy Next.