CGF-evenemang 2022

23 februari, kl.15.00-16.00 

Hélène Ohlsson, universitetslektor i Genusvetenskap vid Karlstads universitet.

"The Swedish Diva Brand: Transatlantic performances of hegemonic whiteness and national identity"

This lecture is a presentation of my postdoctoral project, which is a study with intersectional overlaps of race, sexuality, class and symbolic embodiment of the Swedish nation on stage, film and in public life in the United States and in Sweden 1850–1990. From the point of departure of critical whiteness theories, I will analyze some performances of four Swedish divas with transatlantic careers: opera singers Jenny Lind (1820–1887), Christina Nilsson (1843–1921) and film stars Greta Garbo (1905–1990), Ingrid Bergman (1915– 1982). They are cornerstones in a category that I have coined "the Swedish diva brand." A diva here denotes a successful female artist with an extraordinary artistic skill and fascinating personality that was interesting to an international audience.

When Lind and Nilsson made their acclaimed tours of the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century, their Swedishness was noticed in various ways by the press on both sides of the Atlantic. Lind and Nilsson emphasized their so-called Swedishness and whiteness in order to win over the American audience and at the same time strengthen the Swedish-Americans' assimilation and confirm their identity as Swedes in the diaspora. During the twentieth century, film stars Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman developed and refined these performance strategies during the golden era of Hollywood (1910–1960). I will argue that these four divas embodied symbolic values ​​and triggered emotions that were associated with hegemonic whiteness and notions of a Swedish national identity.

 

Biografi

Hélène Ohlsson has a position as senior lecturer in gender studies at Karlstad University. Her research is situated at the crossroads of theater history and gender studies. Hélène Ohlsson defended her Ph.D. in theater studies at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University 2018. Her dissertation “Divine nothing less than divine”: Actress Ellen Hartman's performances on stage and in public life, Stockholm University 2018, is a contribution to the actress' professional history. Her postdoctoral studies are dedicated to Swedish divas and dandies. Hélène Ohlsson has a background as an actress, director and dramaturge. Research interests are: the actress's professional history, diva, dandy, celebrity, the art of acting, femininity- and masculinity studies and critical whiteness studies.

 

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9 mars, kl.13.15-15 (på svenska)

5C413A och Zoom (anmälan till Zoom görs via jennie.sarnmark@kau.se senast 8 mars kl.18.00)

 

CGF arrangerar i samarbete med Sociologi ett hybridseminarium med:

Johanna Sjöstedt, projektledare Genusvetenskap vid Karlstads universitet
Ulrika Björk, lektor i Filosofi vid Södertörns högskola

”'Vad är en kvinna?' En fråga för feministisk teori?"

 

Frågan "Vad är en kvinna?" kan ses som en urfråga för feministisk teori och politik. I sin klassiker Det andra könet (1949) kommer Simone de Beauvoir fram till en konklusion som har satt tonen för flera generationer tänkare: ”Man föds inte till kvinna, man blir det.” Men vad betyder den idag?

I vår samtid aktualiseras frågan i en rad olika sammanhang både inom och utom akademin och den står i fokus för Vad är en kvinna? Språk, materialitet, situation (Daidalos, 2021). I antologin samlas elva olika bidrag som tillsammans ger en mångsidig belysning av de frågor som kategorin kvinna väcker.

Redaktörerna Evelina Johansson Wilén och Johanna Sjöstedt har bjudit in ett antal forskare med olika inriktning och intressen. Det feministiska tänkandet rymmer, påpekar de i inledningen, både projekt som omfamnar frågeställningen och projekt som avvisar den. Trots den misstänksamhet som frågan väcker bland vissa feminister menar redaktörerna att den inte bör lämnas därhän utan istället kan fungera som en utgångspunkt för en livskraftig feministisk diskussion och reflektion.

Vid seminariet medverkar antologins redaktör Johanna Sjöstedt och Ulrika Björk, som skrivit ett kapitel i antologin. De berättar om projektet och sina respektive texter i antologin.

 

Biografier

 

Ulrika Björk är lektor i filosofi vid Södertörns högskola. Hon intresserar sig särskilt för fenomenologi, existensfilosofi, historiefilosofi och feministisk filosofi. Hennes pågående forskning handlar om Hannah Arendts politiska tänkande. Inom feministisk filosofi har hon tidigare tillsammans med Lisa Folkmarson Käll gett ut antologin Kön, stil, andrahet. Tolv essäer i feministisk kontinentalfilosofi (Daidalos 2010).

 

Johanna Sjöstedt är verksam som projektledare inom forskning vid Centrum för genusforskning vid Karlstads universitet. Hennes arbete är inriktat mot feministisk filosofi och teori i idéhistoriskt perspektiv och hon har bland annat publicerat artiklar om Judith Butler och Simone de Beauvoir. Ett annat intresse är framväxten av genusvetenskap som forskningsområde i nordiska länderna. Tillsammans med Evelina Johansson Wilén är hon redaktör för Vad är en kvinna? Språk, materialitet, situation (Daidalos 2021).

 

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16 mars, kl.15.00-16.00

Liu Xin, universitetslektor i Genusvetenskap vid Karlstads universitet.

"The Intimacy truth of Covid-19 pandemic"

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has been unfolding in the age of post-truth. Named as the 2016’s word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries, post-truth is defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” (Mcintyre 2018, 5). The focus of this presentation is not on how and why fake news circulates but on the enduring, if not intensified, feeling of and for truth in the face of uncertainties and competing narratives of the pandemic. As I will show, this feeling of and for truth takes a specific affective expression, which I call sentimental intimacy. Zooming in on the discussions about the machines at the hospital construction site in Wuhan, I argue that the sentimental intimacy of truth concerns an irreducible attachment to an imagined inside whose close/d-ness undergoes constant negotiation. 

 

Biografi

Liu Xin (she/her) is a senior lecturer at the Center for Gender Studies, Karlstad University. She has published articles in journals such as Feminist Review, Australian Feminist Studies, Journal of Environmental Media, Parallax, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture, Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, Media Theory Journal, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equality. Her recent research projects are located in the intersection of feminist theory, environmental humanities, critical race studies, science and technology studies, social theory and digital media research. She is currently co-editing the book Digital Politics, Digital Histories and Digital Futures, and the special issue “Sexualities and Critiques of Capital” of the journal Kvinder, Køn & Forskning.

 

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13 april, kl.15.00-16.00 (på svenska)

Sandra Andersson, doktorand i Socialt Arbete vid Karlstads universitet.

"Att utforska våldsutsatta kvinnors erfarenheter av skyddat boende med hjälp av institutionell etnografi" 

 

Det sociala arbetet med våldsutsatta kvinnor har genomgått genomgripande förändringar under de senaste årtiondena. Från att ha varit en fråga som har drivits av den ideella kvinnojoursrörelsen har skydd och stöd till kvinnor som utsatts för våld blivit ett offentligt ansvar i Sverige. Det har medfört att de sociala interventioner som erbjuds våldsutsatta kvinnor har professionaliserats. Det gäller inte minst de skyddade boenden som tar emot kvinnor och barn som tvingas lämna sina hem till följd av mäns våld. Skyddat boende drivs numera i både ideell, kommunal och privat regi och för att få komma till ett sådant boende krävs ett beslut från socialtjänsten som beviljar detta som en insats. Den vetenskapliga kunskapen om vad detta har inneburit för de kvinnor som söker skydd undan en våldsam partner är idag begränsad.

I denna presentation introduceras institutionell etnografi som ett teoretiskt och metodologiskt ramverk för att utforska insatsen skyddat boende från våldsutsatta kvinnors ståndpunkt. Institutionell etnografi används för att rikta fokus mot det system som omger insatsen skyddat boende och utforska hur våldsutsatta kvinnors erfarenheter formas av de institutionella relationer och processer som är verksamma inom detta system.

Biografi

Sandra Andersson är doktorand i socialt arbete vid Karlstads universitet. Sandra har en bakgrund som socionom och genusvetare och har 12 års erfarenhet av socialt arbete med våldsutsatta kvinnor, ungdomar och barn inom kommunal och idéburen sektor. I sitt pågående avhandlingsprojekt undersöker hon den sociala organiseringen av insatsen skyddat boende från våldsutsatta kvinnors ståndpunkt.

 

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11-12 maj

E-MigrAgeing Workshop

E-MigrAgeing: Sustainable Ageing of Migrant Populations in Sweden and Japan and their Transnational families in the Framework of Digital Technologies is the title for this two-day online workshop. The aim is to discuss topics of migration, ageing, and digital technologies in Sweden and Japan. The conference is free of charge, but registration is mandatory in order to receive the conference link. Organisers are Karlstad University, Sweden and Toyo University, Japan.

More info presented in document in the right hand column.

 

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25 maj, kl.13-14.30 (Zoom)

Visit the event on Facebook!

 

Younes Saramifar, Ass. professor vid Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. 

"Of Guns and Gods: cartography of martyrdom amongst Shia militias"

This presentation is based on a book project that emerges from a decade of ethnography among Shia militias in the Middle East and Central Asia. By following material expression of religion, I portray a cartography of martyrdom based on everything except Islamic doctrine. In other words, I follow how nonhumans
become partners of militancy and shape the culture of martyrdom beyond what conventionally understood as Islam.

Corpse, guns, winds, soils, waters and borders amongst other nonhumans collaborate in the formation of militant subjectivities. Militant subjectivities are misunderstood as pious religiously motivated formations.

I argue some religious studies, most terrorism studies and almost all political sciences gaze on militancy have side stepped materiality of combats because of the Islamophobia and Orientalist views that have shaped their misguided epistemologies.

 

Biografi

Younes Saramifar is a cultural anthropologist working along historians in Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is an interdisciplinary scholar working on violence, body, hope, piety and ideas of history. His research follows militancy, religiosity and poetics of body through approaches of material religion, postcolonial thinking and speculative realism. The Middle East and the transnational Shia network at large are his research areas.

 

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7 september

15.15 - 16.45 (3A 340 och online)

 

Hil Malatino

"Genealogies of Trans Technicity"

To what extent is the theorization of trans engagements with techno-medical processes embedded in a colonial/modern, Eurocentric understanding of technicity? This talk traces accounts of technologies of transition in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, illuminating how an embrace of the idea of originary technicity has transformed how bodies (trans and cis) are understood, interpellated, and modified; clarifying why such an articulation has mattered as a philosophico-political counter to transantagonistic claims that trans bodies are unnatural and inorganic; and asking after the limitations of such articulations.

 

Hil Malatino is the Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and assistant professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Philosophy at Penn State. He is the author of Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad (Minnesota 2022), Trans Care (Minnesota 2020) which won the Publishing Triangle Award and was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and Queer Embodiment: Monstrosity, Medical Violence, and Intersex Experience. He is also co-editor (alongside Cam Awkward-Rich) of the t4t issue of Trans Studies Quarterly. His work has been published in Signs, Hypatia, TSQ, Rhizomes, The New Inquiry, Ms. Magazine, and many other journals and edited volumes.

 

Vänligen registrera er för en Zoomlänk hos jennie.sarnmark@kau.se senast 5 september.

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28 september

15.15 – 17.00 (4A301A)
 

Chris Beasley och Ulf Mellström

"Exploring new connections between Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities and Feminist New Materialism and Posthumanism."

In this seminar professors Chris Beasley and Ulf Mellström will present their contemporary work on the connection beween CSMM and FNM/PH. Based on two chapters in a forthcoming volume "Posthumanism and the Man Question: Beyond Anthropocentric Masculinities" (Mellström and Pease 2022) they will open up for a wider discussion around the emergent discussion of how CSMM and FNM/PH can converge and what this imply for the 'Man Question'.


Chris Beasley: "Embrace or Engagement? Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities (CSMM) and Feminist New Materialism/Posthumanism" 

The destabilisation of the subject of 'Man' noted in the Introduction to this volume suggests advantageous connections between critical studies of men and masculinities (CSMM) and posthumanism/new materialism (NM/PH) and, in particular, useful connections between CSMM and feminist engagements with the latter. In previous works I have considered in a range of ways how CSMM and feminist frameworks interact and what their relationship is and might be. In my most recent discussion of this subject I explored reasons why writers in the field of CSMM might not, unlike feminist writers, foreclose robust continuing attention to gender identity--that is, the subject of Man--in order precisely to mount strategic responses to power. This discussion suggests that certain forms of ph/nm flatten ontology in ways that may prematurely argue Man out of the picture precisely when human ethico-political responsibility is required. Similarly, forms of NM/PH which, in displacing the human, emphasise nomadism may also flatten differential positions in relation to power. While I have previously considered disjunctions between CSMM and feminism as containing problems and creative possibilities, the emergence of feminist NM/PH raises further questions for the field of CSMM. Re-imagining men and masculinities requires a discriminating stance towards NM/PH.


Ulf Mellström: "Are Posthumanism and Relational Ontologies Necessarily Emancipatory for Masculinity Studies?"

In this short presentation I will touch some of the emancipatory challenges that a closer connection between Posthumanism and masculinity studies might imply. The relation between masculinity, masculinity studies and posthumanism is complex. As masculinity is an onto-epistemological nodal point and a political condition where questions of power, difference, and agency can be effectively understood, it is a challenge to further think around how masculinity can move in the direction of a relational ontology. By which emancipatory openings and empirical directions, can we approach, a radical openness of materiality and an open-endedness of becoming?


Chris Beasley is Emerita Professor and founder of the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender, at the University of Adelaide. She holds an Adjunct Professorship in the Department of Politics and International Relations and is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Her most recent books are Internet Dating Intimacy and Social Change (with Mary Holmes, 2021) and The Cultural Politics of Popular Film: Power, Culture and Society (with Heather Brook, 2019). Previous books include Sexual Economyths: Conceiving a Feminist Economics (1994), What is Feminism?: An Introduction to Feminist Theory (1999), Gender & Sexuality: Critical Theories, Critical Thinkers (2005) and Heterosexuality in Theory and Practice (with Heather Brook and Mary Holmes, 2012).


Ulf Mellström is an anthropologist and Professor of Gender Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden. He has published extensively within the areas of masculinity studies, transport- and mobility studies, gender and technology, gender, risk and crisis management, engineering studies, globalization and higher education, and South East Asian Studies with a particular focus on Malaysia. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of one of the leading journals dedicated to studies of Men and Masculinities - NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies. Recent book publications include Higher Education, Globalisation and Eduscapes: Towards a Critical Anthropology of a Global Knowledge Society, (Forstorp & Mellström 2018, London: Palgrave & MacMillan) and the Routledge International Handbook of Masculinity Studies (Gottzén, Mellström & Shafer 2020).

 

Ingen registrering behövs.

 

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13 oktober 

15.15 - 17.00 (3A340 and Zoom)

Dr Weiyi Hu, Sessionell facilitator, Sydney University, Australia.

"Reflections on Chinese Sexuality" - Samarbete mellan Genusvetenskap och Sociologi 

 

How is sexuality experienced in contemporary China? This seminar notes that most of the seminal writings on sexuality are produced in the West, and that the definition of sexuality is largely theorised by Western scholars. Contemporary studies of Chinese sexuality rarely problematise the Western theorising of sexuality. Chinese sexuality is perceived either as the Other or as a mere appendage of the existing Western discussion of sexuality. The connections and tensions between China and the West in producing knowledges of sexuality is often unexplored.

The aim of this seminar is to sketch an alternative approach that questions the unreflective reliance on Western understanding of sexuality, and to cut through a cluster of dualisms, such as East and West, in theorising Chinese sexuality. Drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s framework of field and habitus, sexuality is analysed as a disposition, as contingent bodily experiences that include, but are not confined to, the conventions of sexual intercourse or erotic desire. Sexuality, it is argued, encompasses a much broader range of experiences in everyday life, some of which are seemingly non-sexual, such as familial codes of honour and shame.

In this seminar, I also combine Xiaomei Chen’s concept of the Chinese Occidentalism discourse and Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital to elucidate the connections and tensions between China and the West. Drawing on fieldwork, I argue that within contemporary Chinese culture the meaning of sexuality experienced in everyday life is charged with tensions between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. A key source of the intension is that the Occident is regularly deployed by social agents as symbolic capital to critique and challenge the official government and orthodox interpretation of Chinese identity, family, and sexuality. The Occident symbolic capital offers social agents in contemporary China alternative ways of perceiving and experiencing sexuality.

 

Weiyi Hu is a sessional facilitator at the University of Sydney, where she recently completed her doctorate in the social sciences. She is interested in the sociology of everyday life, sexuality, feminism, and familial relations in contemporary China. Born in Shanghai, she is fascinated by the complex ways that the Occident (West) is perceived, imagined, narrated, and experienced by Chinese peoples.

 

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25 oktober

Förkonferens G22
19.00 – 20.00, Värmlandsteatern/Tempelriddaren, Karlstad

 

Nina Lykke:
"Vibrant Death. A Posthuman Phenomenology of Mourning"

Book Presentation

 

PERFORMANCE LECTURE WITH POETRY READING

 

In this performance lecture based on my book "Vibrant Death. A Posthuman Phenomenology of Mourning" I will offer poetic, visual and philosophical snapshots from my journey through mourning, as it is contemplated in Vibrant Death. I will share my thoughts on queer mourning, and how it brought me to consider an ecological ethics of planetary kinship and companionship.

 

Bringing together queerfeminism, Deleuzian philosophy, new-materialism, posthumanism, decolonial thought, poetry, and autobiographical stories, Vibrant Death explores the speaking position of a mourning, queerfeminine ”I”. The book is a queer femme’s lamentation of her* lesbian, queermasculine life partner’s cancerdeath. It is also a philosophical contemplation of new eco-spiritual sensibilities. My cripqueering approach to normative biopolitical agendas about (un)healthy grieving, which implies a dwelling in mourning instead of trying to overcome it, took me on a journey into poetry writing, philosophical contemplations, and eco-spiritual practices.

I reflect on my enactment of processes of co-becoming with the phenomenal and material traces of my beloved’s  body, and the new assemblages with which it has merged through death’s material metamorphoses: that is, becoming-ashes through cremation and, when ashes were scattered over a seabed, built by fossilized diatoms (micro-algae), becoming-mixed-with-algae-sand.

 

Nina Lykke is Professor Emerita of Gender Studies at Linköping University, Sweden, and Adjunct Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. She is also a poet and writer, and has recently co-founded an international network for Queer Death Studies. Her current research focuses on feminist theory; queering of death, and mourning in posthuman, queerfeminist, new materialist, decolonial and eco-critical perspectives; autophenomenography; and poetic writing. She has recently published in journals such as Australian Feminist Studies; NORA; Catalyst. Feminism, Theory, Technoscience; Environmental Humanities; Social Identitiee; Kerb Journal; and Lambda Nordica. She is also the author of numerous books such as Cosmodolphins (2000),  Feminist Studies (2010), and Vibrant Death. A Posthuman Phenomenology of Mourning (2022). Website: www.ninalykke.net

 

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2 november

13.15 - 15.00 (5A308C and Zoom)

 

Rabbia Aslam, lecturer in Gender Studies, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

"Navigating the labyrinth: Experiential Realities of Exploring Gender studies as an Academic Field in Pakistan" - Samarbete mellan Genusvetenskap och Sociologi

 

My research focuses on gender studies as an academic discipline in Pakistan: issues, challenges, and prospects. Moreover, it explores the growth of the discipline in contemporary Pakistan. The issues include administrative, financial, and evolution challenges of gender studies in patriarchal societies like Pakistan. On the other hand, challenges are more linked to the state of the discipline, its scope, the nexus between theory and activism, and what sort of knowledge is being produced by the gender studies academics among five leading public sector universities in major metropolitan cities (Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Baluchistan and Peshawar) of Pakistan. Further, it also unpacks the perceptions about feminism, feminist knowledge production, and the role of gender studies as an academic field in Pakistani society.

On the other hand, the prospects involve the data around the future and multidisciplinary nature of gender studies, there are diverse thoughts about autonomy and integration debate in gender studies. I would be happy to share ideas with students and faculty about its growth, and contemporary challenges, and here is one of the biggest challenges is that the impetus (funding) to establish and grow gender studies comes from international pressure from aid agencies. Still, the implementation of these programs ends up at least partially in the hands of conservative (even anti-feminist) administration at the universities who perceive the imposition of gender studies as antithetical to Pakistani culture, perhaps a threat to religious mores, and even Western colonialist in intent and effect. It helps us to see how it survived within mainstream social sciences because in our context it is still considered an ideology, not a purely scientific discipline. Within universities, educated intellectuals thought that there is no need to establish such discipline. Although, Pakistan has ranked 153rd out of 156th in the global gender gap index (2021) by World economic forum yet, there is a less demand for gender studies as teaching and research program in universities.

Rabbia Aslam is currently working as a lecturer Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies at the Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan, with which she has been associated for more than ten years. Currently, she is a visiting researcher at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) Hague, the Netherlands. With an academic background in sociology and gender, her research and teaching areas include violence sociology of knowledge production, sociology of gender, bifurcation in the education system, and post- and decolonial thinking in Pakistan. 

 

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16 november

Gender Talk Series and KUFO seminar series

15.15 – 16.45 (3A340 and Zoom)

 

Fanny Söderbäck

"Narrating Relational Uniqueness: Adriana Cavarero’s Narrative Theory and Saidiya Hartman’s Critical Fabulation"

This talk draws from Italian feminist philosopher’s Adriana Cavarero’s narrative theory to examine the work of feminists of color who engage in practices of self-narration and critical re-writing of the archives of Black life in the wake of slavery. Cavarero controversially argues that we are incapable of telling our own story, and thus always depend on others to narrate our lives. I begin by elucidating the importance of Cavarero’s narrative theory for developing a framework for understanding selfhood in relational terms.

Next, I put critical pressure on Cavarero’s dismissal of autobiography by way of looking specifically at practices of self-writing in women of color’s attempts to affirm relational and interdependent aspects of identity. Finally, I turn specifically to Saidiya Hartman’s concept critical fabulation, reading it as an example of the kind of relational narrative that Cavarero seeks to promote in her work.

I suggest that Hartman, like Cavarero, ventures to trace the contours of the extraordinary singularity of the women whose lives she narrates in her work – lives that would have been rendered invisible and silent had it not been for her insistence on putting them into what she calls a counter-narrative. My hope is to open avenues for relating the narratives of these distant traditions, through their shared commitment to relational conceptions of selfhood and their mutual desire to narrate history – and histories – otherwise.

 

Fanny Söderbäck is Associate Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University and the co-founder and co-director of the Kristeva Circle. She will soon be joining the Department of Philosophy at Södertörns Högskola. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research. She is the author of Revolutionary Time: On Time and Difference in Kristeva and Irigaray (SUNY Press, 2019). She has edited Feminist Readings of Antigone (SUNY Press, 2010) and is a co-editor of the volume Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

She is currently working on a book project on Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, in which she puts her work into conversation with queer and trans theories as well as Latinx, Black, and decolonial feminisms to re-envision selfhood and human relations through the framework of singularity (forthcoming with SUNY Press).

 

 

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23 november

15.15-16.45 (Zoom)

Nina Lykke

"Conflicted Intersectionalities and Situated Ethics of Unease"

Feminisms have since their start been plural and based on disidentifications rather than identifications and smooth ’sisterly’ unity. Due to intersectional differences, feminist activism and politics are conflictual arenas, cut through by internal difference and disidentifications. In the lecture, I take this state of the art as a point of departure, which should not be deplored, but conversely seen as a basis for vibrancy and continuous renewal.

However, it will also be argued that a prerequisite for frictions to lead to new coalition buildings and productive change rather than congeal into stalemates and blocked potentials for collective actions for change, is that disidentifications are seriously discussed in transversal conversations. Though, for commitments to transversality to come into being, I argue that it is important to take into account how frictions emerge from different corpo-affectively invested and situated onto-epistemologies.

To make the point, I look at some examples, where clashing ontological-affective investments of different fractions of social justice movements have led to strong frictions. The examples pivot around the categories trans/gender, race and whiteness – all highly conflictual and passionately corpo-affectively invested. Against the background of a corpo-affective and onto-epistemological analysis of the frictions as they appear in the examples, I argue for a situated ethics of unease, and ask about its potentials for facilitating transversal politics.

 

Nina Lykke is Professor Emerita of Gender Studies at Linköping University, Sweden, and Adjunct Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. She is also a poet and writer, and has recently co-founded an international network for Queer Death Studies. Her current research focuses on feminist theory; queering of death, and mourning in posthuman, queerfeminist, new materialist, decolonial and eco-critical perspectives; autophenomenography; and poetic writing. She has recently published in journals such as Australian Feminist Studies; NORA; Catalyst. Feminism, Theory, Technoscience; Environmental Humanities; Social Identitiee; Kerb Journal; and Lambda Nordica. She is also the author of numerous books such as Cosmodolphins (2000), Feminist Studies (2010), and Vibrant Death. A Posthuman Phenomenology of Mourning (2022). Website: www.ninalykke.net