Carolina A Diaz
Wesleyan University, Romance Languages and Literatures, Faculty Member
- Ecocriticism, Anthropocene, Chile, Women and Gender Studies, Environmental Studies, Elemental Philosophy, and 39 moreFeminist Theory, Ecofeminism, Theories of Time, Anthropocene studies, Memory Studies, New Materialism, Critical Theory, Continental Philosophy, Decolonial Thought, Decolonization, Decolonial Feminism, Military Dictatorship, Chilean Poetry, Chilean Literature, Chilean Politics, Essay Film, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Elizabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism, Ecocritical Theory, Continental Philosophy and Aesthetics, Tierra del Fuego, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Environmental Humanities, Film Theory, Philosophy of Film, Ecocinema, Latin American Cinema, Film Studies, Cinema Studies, Latin American Art, Film Analysis, Film-Philosophy, Material Ecocriticism, and Environmental Philosophyedit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Women's Studies, Women's writing, Continental Philosophy, Women's Literature, and 13 moreGiorgio Agamben, Memory Studies, Chile, Biopolitics, Dictatorships, Corporeality, Diamela Eltit, Military Dictatorship, Postdictatorship Literature and Criticism, Dictadura, Dictaduras En El Cono Sur, Female body, and Memory and Trauma Studies
Western philosophies have traditionally equated woman with lack, the not-all, that which is not, and she has been regarded in negative binary terms, where man is light, reason, culture, mind, and woman is night, intuition, nature, and... more
Western philosophies have traditionally equated woman with lack, the not-all, that which is not, and she has been regarded in negative binary terms, where man is light, reason, culture, mind, and woman is night, intuition, nature, and body. Feminist studies, from their inception, have resisted these categories and have tried to respond to masculinist definitions of what a woman is. Understandably, feminism is wary of concepts such as the body and nature for they seem to instantiate traditional visions of both woman and gender, biologically and socially constructed identities. However, my aim is to highlight the importance of recovering the place of nature and of our immersion in nature within feminist studies and, from the perspective of philosophies of life, to rethink embodiment and identity politics beyond postmodern frameworks. To think about feminism's future in connection with its past failures and achievements, we need to examine humanity's most fundamental context: its place within life. In order to do so, I follow the work of Elizabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray, and Friedrich Nietzsche in exploring how theories of life can enhance feminist episte-mologies with an ontology of difference that conceives of new social and political relations and identities. I contend that matter, as the expression of life, and corporeality, as the expression of difference, can help us redefine woman, femi-nism, and humanism in relation to a world environmentally, economically, and geopolitically in crisis.