Moving Through Power

Having gone around the world as a political philosopher, the chapter explores a migrant academic’s journey through the Netherlands, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia and Germany. Looking at Western-centric academia and its power structures, the hierarchies of knowledge and humanity maintained within them and the continuous devaluation and disregard of the knowledges from (de)occupied Europe’s East, the migrant experience is one of concern with what persistent East-West inequalities tell on those who enact and preserve them. Experiencing an increasingly far right German socio-political and academic environment brings back echoes of Nazi imperialism and Aryan racism that are haunting beyond a salvageable point. Refusal emerges as a profoundly powerful intergenerational response and the only way toward an intellectually and humanely meaningful and inspiring experience.