Nicolaas Buitendag

Post-doctoral Fellow, North-West University, South Africa

Believing that current global questions ask for broad structural responses, Dr. Nico Buitendag conducts transdisciplinary theoretical research that bridges law, politics, sociology, historiography and philosophy. Deeply influenced by autopoietic systems theory, his work attempts to project the theory further along its radical and anti-hierarchical horizon.
This has led to publications connecting theory to practical cases such as political hate-speech trials, sanctioned police violence at Marikana, the death of Steve Biko at the hands of the state, and border conflicts between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It has also resulted in the translation into English of several works of Niklas Luhmann, late pioneer of autopoietic systems theory, from German.
Currently Dr. Buitendag is distilling his doctoral work into a monograph (forthcoming from Aosis Publishing, 2022) which engages with the structural and systemic complicity of law, politics and science in colonial projects.