Judith Butler

This paper is part of a wider study of contemporary Japanese discourses on education policy and work skills, which seeks to combine Laclau and Mouffe's Discourse Theory with Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis to operationalise Discourse Theory as a practical method for the discursive analysis of texts.

This paper critically reviews the current status of the concept of distance in human geography in order to argue that recent experimentally-driven work in construal-level theory offers ample opportunities for recasting distance as a key geographical trope. After analysing the four entangled dimensions of distance revealed by construal-level theory (spatial distance; temporal distance; social distance; and hypothetical distance), the paper articulates this research program from experimental psychology with geographical work on non-representational theory, geographical imaginations/imaginative geographies, learning as a geographical process, TimeSpace theorizing, and ontogenetic understandings of space. It is argued that the subjective understanding of distance afforded by construal-level theory can rescue distance from its entrenched association with positivistic geography and spatial analysis. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.07.018

Exploring questions of race, sexuality and the law, this is Judith Butler's first interview discussing her affinities with anarchism. She resists the temptation to draw a clear line between being inside or outside of the state, for or against the law. Rather, she points to the fragility of any given legal code were regime and its possibility subversion or even dissolution in favour of popular sovereignty. Linking Anarchists Against the Wall, Benjamin, Althusser and the Zapatista encuentros with everyday questions of dignity and survival, this interview demonstrates the possibility and value of queering the border between activist and scholar.

Since I have always wanted to learn more about Julia Kristeva's oeuvre, I tried to analyze a couple of Kristeva's ideas and concepts in this paper. I tried to engage myself in the debate on whether Kristeva's semiotic politics could be seen as subversive enough to be feminist. I have claimed that some of her basic concepts can be read in a feminist manner, nonetheless Kristeva's oeuvre is packed with all sorts of ambiguities and ambivalences, which makes it hard to define her position towards feminism. At the end of this paper, I also try to supplement Irigaray's conceptualization of the chora to the one of Kristeva, in order to stress that the latter's semiotic politics are feminist and subversive, but maybe a bit too 'maternal' instead of feminine.

When one thinks of Walt Disney , irregardless of the context, it is hard not to think of the word Magic. The animation produced by Walt Disney Company cultivated the idea of doing the impossible, a world made of Dreams and brought a revolution to the industry both in terms of content and design. As a child , like many others ,I always held a special place for Disney productions. As an adult, I learned to look deeper than the surface, to question rather than accept. Thus, now having a love hate relationship with Walt Disney fairytales , I decided to conduct a research focusing on one of the recurrent and main characters in the productions throughout the years. The villain, despite its intent to terrorize, has become a fan favourite amongst Disney Audiences, usually due to their representation of otherness.

Nel presente lavoro si analizzano i concetti principali che concorrono alla definizione della natura dell'essere umano come essere sessuale, tra i quali: coscienza, intersoggettività, corpo e desiderio. Partendo dall'esistenzialismo di Jean-Paul Sartre si delinea mano a mano una fenomenologia che mette in risalto la sessualità come qualcosa di connaturato all'essere umano tanto quanto la razionalità. La sessualità infatti non è un accessorio aggiunto ma è 'coestensiva' all'uomo, sessualità ed esistenza si compenetrano mantenendosi entro un'unità che tiene insieme i diversi aspetti dell'essere umano.
La sessualità rivendica la sua importanza, soprattutto negli ultimi cent'anni che è stata esposta senza pudore e coinvolta in qualunque aspetto della vita dell'uomo, non vive più nell'ombra, e non è protetta dalla discreta intimità di una relazione, è uscita allo scoperto e i discorsi scientifici abbondano e hanno portato in vita una disciplina dedicata ad essa: la sessuologia. Il ragionamento filosofico non può essere escluso dal momento che accettiamo l'uomo come essere sessuale dobbiamo analizzarne le implicazioni che ne conseguono nella relazione con il mondo e con gli altri. La sessualità non è solo sesso e non è solo amore, è tutto, è uomo, corpo, desiderio, rapporto con l'altro, è esistenza.

The paper provides a detailed theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between contingency and necessity, and applies it to major schools of thought in the social sciences.

Key words: social theory; cultural theory; political theory; legal theory; political economy;  historiography; social sciences; historical institutionalism; epistemology; gender studies;

How to cite:
Simandan, D. (2010) Beware of contingency. Environment and planning D: Society and Space, 28(3), pp. 388 - 396.

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1. "Fine della differenza sessuale?" è il titolo di un articolo di Judith Butler, pubblicato per la prima volta nel 2001 e poi, nel 2004, in Undoing Gender. In questo testo, la filosofa si confronta con l'inizio della campagna contro la cosiddetta teoria/ideologia del gender, che risale al 1995, quando la Chiesa protestò contro l'uso del concetto di genere nei documenti della Conferenza ONU sulla condizione delle donne di Pechino (Garbagnoli 2014). Nel testo del 2001, tra le altre cose, Butler commenta l'articolo pubblicato da Marco Politi su «La Repubblica» il 20 maggio 1995, intitolato La Chiesa si prepara alla guerra dei cinque sessi, e mette in evidenza ciò che oggi appare come un'ovvietà: che la polemica della Chiesa cattolica contro "il gender" è una difesa del patriarcato e dell'eterosessualità obbligatoria in reazione alle rivendicazioni e alle conquiste del femminisimo e dei movimenti LGBTQI. Nelle parole dei suoi oppositori, la pericolosa teoria/ideologia sarebbe infatti responsabile di diffondere l'omosessualità, la transessualità e la perversione sessuale, di distruggere la famiglia naturale e * Università di Verona. Il 16 aprile 2016, presso Lìbrati, la Libreria delle donne di Padova, si è tenuta una tavola rotonda dal titolo Fine della differenza sessuale?. Scopo dell'iniziativa, nelle intenzioni delle organizzatrici -le libraie Ilaria Durigon e Laura Capuzzo e Bruna Giacomini che ha presieduto l'evento -era avviare quel confronto sull'attualità italiana tra pensiero della differerenza sessuale, altri femminismi radicali, rivendicazioni dei movimenti LGBTQI (mainstream e antagonisti) e pensiero queer, di cui molti e molte sentono da tempo la necessità. Stefania Ferrando, Chiara Zamboni, Federico Zappino e io abbiamo accolto con entusiasmo l'invito. Questo articolo è una rielaborazione del mio intervento. cancellare i ruoli tradizionali della donna e dell'uomo: di decretare, appunto, in questo senso, la fine della differenza sessuale. Nel 1995 era papa Wojtyla. Sono stati però i suoi successori, prima Ratzinger e poi Bergoglio, a pronunciarsi pubblicamente contro «il lemma 'gender'» (Ratzinger 2008 e 2012), «la teoria del gender» e «la colonizzazione ideologica» operata da tale teoria (Bergoglio 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2016; Scaramuzzi 2015), dando legittimità al blocco tradizionalista che di queste espressioni ha fatto efficaci strumenti di azione politica (De Guerre e Prearo 2016). Sulla mobilitazione che ne è seguita hanno già scritto su questa rivista Sara Garbagnoli (2014) e Giulia Selmi (2015), ai cui articoli volentieri rimando. Ciò che importa qui ricordare è che in Italia la mobilitazione ha riportato non pochi successi, sia a livello di politiche locali, sia a livello di politica nazionale. Alcuni consigli comunali, ad esempio, tra cui quelli di Padova e di Verona, hanno votato delibere in difesa della famiglia naturale. La regione Veneto ha istituito la giornata della famiglia naturale, da celebrare a scuola il giorno che precede le vacanze natalizie. Il sindaco di Venezia ha disposto la confisca di alcuni libri accusati di diffondere la teoria del gender dalle biblioteche degli asili. Il sindaco di Padova ha negato l'autorizzazione a ospitare in una sala comunale la presentazione del libro di Michela Marzano (2015), Papà, mamma e gender. Ma soprattutto: grazie alla protesta no-gender, il controverso disegno di legge contro l'istigazione all'odio verso le persone omosessuali e transessuali, approvato alla Camera nel settembre 2013, non è mai stato discusso in Se capisco bene, Butler intende dire qualcosa di simile quando, a proposito della differenza sessuale, afferma di voler «lasciare la faccenda aperta, problematica, irrisolta, e promettente» (Butler 2004; trad. it. 2014, 284). Muraro (2015) coglie quindi qualcosa di fondamentale del suo pensiero quando utilizza l'espressione «un imprevisto che falsifica le teorie». Ma travisa molto altro. Riferimenti bibliografici * Barbin, H. (1978), Herculine Barbin dite Alexina B., Paris, Gallimard; trad. it. Una strana confessione. Memorie di un ermafrodito presentate da Michel Foucault, Torino, Einaudi, 2007. Beauvoir, S. de (1949), Le deuxiéme sexe, Paris, Gallimard; trad. it. Il secondo sesso, Milano, il Saggiatore, 1999. Bergoglio, J.M. (2014), Discorso del Santo Padre Francesco alla delegazione dell'Ufficio Internazionale Cattolico dell'Infanzia (BICE), in «Bollettino della Sala stampa della Santa Sede», 11 aprile 2014,

This article addresses the notions of gender performativity and temporality in Butler's early work on gender. The paper is articulated in four steps. First it gives an account of the role and nature of temporality in Butler's theory of gender performativity. Second, it shows some similarities and connections between the role played by temporality in Butler's theory of gender performativity and its role in Marx's analysis of capital. Third, it raises some criticisms of Butler's understanding of temporality and historicity, focusing in particular on the lack of historicisation of her own categories in both Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter. This deficit is a consequence of the epistemological framework within which she is operating, in particular of her understanding of social practices and relations through the lens of linguistic concepts extrapolated from their theoretical context. The article concludes by referring to Floyd's and Hennessy's analyses of the formation of sexual identities as examples of the fruitful historicisation of gender performativity, which also sheds some light on the 'the abstract character' of the temporality of gender performativity.

Wayne Vucinic Book Prize 2007, "for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences." 

Endorsement by Slavoj Zizek:

"Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More immediately seduced me by its very title with a profound philosophical implication that eternity is a historical category--things can be eternal for some time. The same spirit of paradox runs through the entire book--it renders in wonderful details the gradual disintegration of the Soviet system from within its ideological and cultural space, making visible all the hypocrisy and misery of this process. I consider Yurchak's book by far the best work about the late epoch of the Soviet Union--it is not just history, but a pleasure to read, a true work of art." (Slavoj Zizek, author of In Defense of Lost Causes)

Abstract:

Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation.

Según observé el argumento más significativo de Gender Trouble es que la coherencia de las categorías de sexo, género, deseo y sexualidad —la figuradamente, y en apariencia natural, coherencia de elementos como el género masculino y el deseo heterosexual en los cuerpos masculinos— es construida culturalmente mediante la repetición de actos estilizados en el tiempo (los cuales ilusoriamente pasan por “hechos”). Dichos actos corporales estilizados son los que, en su repetición continua, determinan el aspecto de un núcleo ontológico denominado “género”. En este sentido es que Judith Butler introduce su noción del género, el sexo y la sexualidad como performativos, esto es configurados, a través de su actuación o representación.  Advertir eso permite subvertir la identidad desde los feminismos.

It is widely believed that the philosophical concept of ‘tabula rasa’ originates with Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and refers to a state in which a child is as formless as a blank slate. Given that both these beliefs are entirely false, this article will examine why they have endured from the eighteenth century to the present. Attending to the history of philosophy, psychology, psychiatry and feminist scholarship it will be shown how the image of the tabula rasa has been used to signify an originary state of formlessness, against which discourses on the true nature of the human being can differentiate their position. The tabula rasa has operated less as a substantive position than as a whipping post. However, it will be noted that innovations in psychological theory over the past decade have begun to undermine such narratives by rendering unintelligible the idea of an ‘originary’ state of human nature.

Based on fieldwork in the United States, the article analyses the social construction of gender in contemporary OTO. The article addresses an important and often neglected area of study in research on Western esotericism, and discusses how the notion of binary gender is both created and challenged in interactions between OTO members. Thelemic divinity as presented in Liber AL is envisioned as consisting of a divine father, Hadit, mother Nuit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit, their divine offspring. Despite the gender polarity constructed thus, contemporary OTO members stretch the boundaries of binary gender through a plethora of deities, personal gender performances and acceptance of different sexual orientations and lifestyles. The creativity and innovation of contemporary OTO members’ gender constructions demonstrates the necessity of greater methodological diversity in research on Western esotericism, in order to allow an understanding of esoteric traditions as lived religions.

Judith Butler's new book interweaves her two theories of performativity and precarity with the works of Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, and Emmanuel Levinas as a way to critically assess and speak to Tahrir Square, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and other movements of dissent. In this interview, Stephanie Berbec asks her to consider her work in light of the recent events at Standing Rock and the 2016 presidential election.

This paper argues that, in order to take place, space and scale more seriously in the study of our discipline, we have to complement the pervasive understanding of geography as a tradition of thought or an extended conversation with an understanding of our discipline as a tradition of practice, in which the main focus is on the becoming of geographers. It is argued that the theme of 'what it takes to be a good geographer' is a fertile way to study this process of becoming. The four main advantages of this approach are illustrated empirically in the body of the argument by the author's reflections on his socializing within two very different geographical traditions.

Phenomenologically speaking, one can consider the experiencing body as normative insofar as it generates norms through repeated actions and interactions, crystallizing into habits. On the other hand according to Foucauldian approaches, the subjective body does not generate norms but is itself produced by norms: Dominant social norms are incorporated via repeated practices of discipline. How is the individual level of habit formation in phenomenology related to this embodiment of supra-individual norms? In what sense can we differentiate between a habit formation that results in a skill and one that disciplines a body? To address these questions the paper will analyze examples of the embodiment of norms in Foucault and feminist philosophy and show how they rely on the phenomenological concept of the actual and habitual body.

Despite the many announcements of its death, the western has recently reappeared in American cinema and literature, reinvigorating a tradition that spans from James Fenimore Cooper’s Hawkeye to the Lone Ranger and John Wayne. Among the many recent productions, this volume considers American films, literature, and music, produced between 1985 and 2011: movies such as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Roberto Ford, The Ballad of Little Jo, Brokeback Mountain, 3:10 to Yuma, Don’t Come Knocking, the TV series Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman, the novels Blood Meridian, God’s Country, and hick-hop music. Matching western, men’s, literary, and film studies, Bordin reads the western as a gendered cultural product, which comments on pivotal contemporary themes such as issues of fatherhood, homosexuality, gaze, and race and gender appropriations. Building upon Judith Butler’s notion of the performative nature of gender, Bordin analyzes how the western interacts with models of American masculinity, confirming the genre’s crucial role in the American cultural and ideological landscape at the turn of the new millennium.

"The text presents an analysis of categories of public and private sphere, which are connected with the social division of roles based on gender. The sphere was recognized as a sphere of participation, i.e. as a special kind of interaction, presentation, and legitimacy of collective or individual identity. It is important for the analysis to indicate that a particular discourse, within science and in society, strengthen the interpretation of human life and specific practices. Consolidated in this way discourse facilitated the exclusion of women from public life, and, therefore, also reverse process, that means emancipation (subsequent waves of feminism).

In the text three elements that could affect the consolidation of sexism were presented: (1) demographic descriptions of the population, (2) religious exclusion, (3) social practices within specific areas of activity. Demographic description of the human population, which can be found in the various fields or trends, such as environmentalism, sociobiology and bio-politics, affects quantitative interpretations. Qualitative elements were brought to the analysis of human reproductive functions, and the woman in the analysis had a definite role in society. However, the religious exclusion was only stressed on the example of Christianity. An analysis of exclusion in the case of religion may be considered on two levels – internal and social. In the first case we deal with the exclusion of women within the church structure itself, in the second case we deal with using the ideological content to shape the roles and functions of women in society. The last element contributing to the perpetuation of sexism are defined social practices described on the example of the concept of fields and capital of P. Bourdieu and the idea of economic, political and ideological domination of Karl Marx.

It should be noted that the dominance of men in society influenced the possibility of significant accumulation of capital (e.g. social, cultural, symbolic). The presence of men in many spheres combined with the exclusion of women, helped to set up rules, practices and interpretations of social reality in accordance with an androcentric matrix. It affected to a large extent the assignment of women to certain social roles in public and private area."

There is increasing recognition among human geographers that conceptualizing the spatiality of peace is a vital component of our collective disciplinary praxis. Within this emergent literature, I seek to position anarchism as an ethical philosophy of nonviolence and the absolute rejection of war. Such an interpretation does not attempt to align nonviolence to any particular organized religious teaching, as has recently been advocated by Nick Megoran (2011). Instead, I argue that the current practices of religion undermine the geographies of peace by fragmenting our affinities into discrete pieces. Advancing a view of anarchism as nonviolence, I go beyond religion to conceptualize peace as both the unqualified refusal of the manifold-cum-interlocking processes of domination, and a precognitive, pre-normative, and presupposed category rooted in our inextricable entanglement with each other and all that exists. Yet far from proposing an essentialist view of humanity or engaging a naturalized argument that reconvenes the ‘noble savage’, I contextualize my arguments within the processual frameworks of radical democracy and agonism in seeking to redress the ageographical and ahistorical notions of politics that comprise the contemporary post-political zeitgeist.

Nicht nur im Silicon Valley oder in Startups, sondern auch in herkömmlichen Arbeitswelten und in den Sozialformen unserer post-industriellen Zeit hat sich eine neue Regierungstechnik etabliert: Menschen werden durch gezielte Stimulierung von Emotionen und Affekten beeinflusst. Dieses Buch entwickelt eine philosophische Theorie zum Zusammenhang von Affektivität, Macht und Subjektivierung. Unter dem Stichwort „Immersion“ unternimmt es eine Zeitdiagnose der sozialen und ökonomischen Verhältnisse westlicher Gegenwartsgesellschaften. Es leistet einen Beitrag zur kritischen Sozialphilosophie und zu einer Theorie der Gouvernementalität in Anknüpfung an Baruch Spinoza, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze und die Tradition des Post-Operaismus.
Erscheinungsdatum: 08.03.2018

A presente tese tem por objetivo a explicitação de bases conceituais que sustentem uma nova leitura da teoria da sexuação. O texto busca investigar a origem e extrair consequências da máxima "o ser sexual só se autoriza de si mesmo e de alguns outros", enunciada por Lacan no seminário Os não-bestas erram, num exercício de redescrição das fórmulas da sexuação a partir de um dizer. Visando sublinhar a dimensão processual da sexuação, elegeu-se o conceito de identificação como método e realizou-se um levantamento de suas incidências junto aos registros real, simbólico e imaginário ao longo do ensino de Lacan. No primeiro capítulo, discutiu-se a influência de Marcel Proust na concepção lacaniana que liga a autorização sexuada ao grupo e o paralelo entre a sexuação e a autorização do psicanalista. Buscou-se, junto a modalidades de luta por reconhecimento social e político de gêneros não inteligíveis, um modelo de grupo que Lacan precisa como aquele de "um real recentemente emergido". No segundo capítulo, retraçaram-se as origens das noções de significante (na ideia de constelação simbólica), grande Outro (descrito inicialmente como grandes Outros) e lei simbólica (e sua indissociável relação com a norma em Lévi-Strauss), buscando demonstrar de que forma a alteridade simbólica que localiza a posição do sujeito sexuado é plural e baseia-se na variabilidade dos elementos num dado sistema estrutural. O último capítulo buscou apresentar, tanto em Freud como em Lacan, o papel fundamental dos semelhantes no processo de assunção sexual, bem como discutiu a autorização em termos de uma precipitação - presente tanto no estádio do espelho quanto no momento de concluir do tempo lógico. Por fim, uma discussão relativa à noção de sinthoma demonstrou a centralidade do ato de nomeação enquanto instância que enoda os três registros da sexuação.

This article utilizes the work of Judith Butler in order to chart a queer and feminist animal studies, an animal studies that celebrates our shared embodied finitude. Butler's commentary on other animals remains dispersed and fragmented throughout books, lectures, and interviews over the course of the last several years. This work is critically synthesized in conjunction with her work on mourning and precarious lives. By developing an anti-anthropocentric understanding of mourning and precarious lives, this article hopes to create ontological, ethical, and political concepts that resist the violence of the present. In so doing, the article contrasts Butler's understanding of precarious life with Giorgio Agamben's understanding of bare life in order to conceive of precariousness as constitutive of social reality. This intellectual labor lays the groundwork for understanding mourning the lives of other animals as a political act that produces new communities, rather than as an individuating and isolating emotion.

This is my under-graduation monography on the emergence of Queer Studies in Brasil. It is an extended version which encompasses an essay on the emergence of the dual conception of sex and sexualities between 17th and 20th centuries CE. This monograph has been acclaimed as the “most complete survey of Queer Studies in Brazil” (Denilson Lopes. “In Search of a New Invisibility”. In: Carvalho, V. M., Gavioli, N. (ed.). Literature and Ethics in Contemporary Brazil. (London: Routledge, 2017.) p. 167).

Sexual difference isn't tied to feminism but prompts its enquiry, according to Judith Butler 1 . Similarly, psychoanalytical notions of sexual difference and the contingency of those identities to the phallus are not only open to feminist critique; there are other theoretical questions to be asked of the entity which is said to structure subjectivity in psychoanalytical thinking, especially because of philosophical complexity that Lacan introduces to Freud's framework This essay will examine two serious challenges to Lacan's expounding of the phallus. First, a feminist critique which asserts that ideas about subjectivity that centre on the phallus are sexist and / or force home a patriarchal viewpoint leaving feminists without a voice; and second, that Lacan's own concept destroys its own very foundations.

An interpretation and critique of postmodern theory from the point of view of its theoretical content and ideological function. Postmodernism is both the theory and ideology of postmodernity, which designates the historical period of late capitalism, and functions as a dominant framework of discourse. Considered from the point of view of its theoretical content, postmodern theory is systematically false in every single respect, and as a dominant framework of discourse introduces systematic distortions within all of the discourses in which postmodernism has been influential, including much of the humanities. But postmodernism is not simply a theoretical mistake; it is among other things the ideology of a definite historical period. As an ideology of late capitalism, postmodern theory expresses, but does not comprehend, the condition of its own alienation -- which in turn explains its systematic falsity. An expression of this alienation, it is too deeply imbricated in the forms of consciousness proper to its own historical period to form an adequate conception of that period, or of itself. That is in turn because postmodern theory itself is a postmodern artifact, the  commodity-form of theory in the period of late capitalism, and represents the wholesale commodification of theory itself. Postmodernism thus stands to be criticized on at least three grounds. As a framework of discourse, it is systematically distorted. As a theory of postmodernity, it is false. And as an ideology, it is complicit in the social reproduction of capital. This presents in turn a twofold problem, at once theoretical and practical. Theoretically, it must be refuted. Practically, it must be resisted. In both cases, it must opposed, if possible, eliminated.

If Lady Gaga, as we are told ever so bluntly by the hyper-butch, body-building guards in “Telephone” (2010, Dir. Jonas Åkerlund), does not “have a dick,” Jo Calderone certainly does. Taking her critique of the fetishization of the female body into the public sphere, Gaga donned a meat dress in protest of the expectations of female stars by the popular media at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2010; this year, she simply refused to be female altogether. In this chapter, I examine the trans/affect of Lady Gaga’s carefully scripted display of the Jo Calderone persona in both his interview and fashion spread in Vogue Hommes Japan.
Gaga’s monstrous aesthetics are political because they fit within the category of the sublime. The sublime identifies those aesthetic practices in excess of the viewer’s cognitive capacity for reason; it remains obscure to our conceptual powers. Trans embodiment can be seen as an expression of the sublime, as it reveals the multiplicity and instability at the heart of gender. As T. Ben Singer argues, transgender embodiments evoke the sublime because they “confront us with a vision of potentially infinite specific possibilities for being human” (616). In this way, trans/affect names the complex of affective responses evoked by transgender embodiment.

Au tournant des années 1990 naît, dans le sillon d’autres courants féministes critiques à l’égard du féminisme, le courant féministe postmoderne. Ce dernier qui, déjà à l’époque, ne fait pas l’unanimité demeure encore, quinze ans plus tard, tout autant contesté. Bien que la controverse qu’il suscite lui donne une visibilité sur la scène internationale, le féminisme postmoderne demeure néanmoins méconnu dans les milieux universitaires et intellectuels québécois.
Cette recherche a donc pour objectif d’analyser de façon détaillée ce qui caractérise le féminisme postmoderne et d’étudier de plus près la controverse qu’il provoque. La question centrale de ce travail est la suivante : le féminisme postmoderne est-il utile pour le féminisme défini comme un mouvement théorique et politique visant à éliminer les rapports inégalitaires entre les hommes et les femmes ? Pour tenter de répondre à cette question, ce mémoire est réparti en quatre chapitres.
Le chapitre 1 vise à définir les termes utilisés dans cette recherche et a comme finalité d’expliciter ce qui constitue les contours d’une philosophie féministe postmoderne. Il est divisé en trois sections. La première a pour but de fournir une définition minimale du féminisme qui sera utilisée comme point de référence pour répondre à la question centrale du mémoire. La deuxième section explore brièvement les théories postmodernes, tant sur le plan philosophique, épistémologique, social que politique, en vue de mieux comprendre les fondements mêmes du courant féministe postmoderne. La troisième section, enfin, cherche à définir ce courant féministe à travers des définitions générales et l’analyse de cinq paires de concepts clés au féminisme postmoderne.
Le chapitre 2 veut être un approfondissement des théories féministes postmodernes à travers l’analyse de la pensée de Judith Butler, une théoricienne dont le nom revient comme un véritable leitmotiv dans le corpus littéraire du courant féministe postmoderne. Il est également divisé en trois sections. La première a pour but de présenter Judith Butler et de justifier le choix de cette auteure parmi un nombre important de théoriciennes. La seconde section s’attarde d’une façon générale à ses thèses féministes et philosophiques et analyse ensuite, dans une perspective butlérienne, les cinq paires de concepts clés du féminisme postmoderne, tout en ouvrant sur sa politique féministe. La dernière section met en lumière la controverse autour de l’œuvre de Butler en examinant les critiques qui lui sont faites et les réponses que Butler élabore pour les contrer.
Le chapitre 3 cherche à comprendre les incidences concrètes de l’utilisation des théories féministes postmodernes en vue de répondre à la question initiale de ce mémoire, en les appliquant à un cas précis, celui de la discussion prostitution/travail du sexe. Il permet de mieux saisir les arguments du courant féministe postmoderne en faveur d’une décriminalisation totale du travail du sexe ainsi que la position de Butler au regard de ce phénomène. Il est aussi divisé en trois sec-tions. La première brosse un portrait global des relations entre le féminisme et la prostitution, quantifie et met en perspective les différentes industries du sexe et présente les types possibles de législation vis-à-vis la prostitution. La seconde section s’intéresse au positionnement des courants féministes dans le débat prostitution/travail du sexe. Elle s’attarde particulièrement à l’option néo-abolitionniste, représentée par exemple par les féministes radicales et matérialistes, ainsi qu’à l’option pro-travail du sexe, exprimée notamment par les féministes postmodernes. La troisième section soulève les défis et questionnements qu’amène cette discussion pour le féminisme.
Le chapitre 4 a pour objectif d’exposer les arguments du débat qui oppose les féministes postmodernes et leurs détractrices et détracteurs, à travers leurs critiques réciproques. Il est divisé en trois sections. La première présente les principales critiques des personnes s’opposant au féminisme postmoderne, qui refusent d’être considérées de manière unilatérale et qui accusent leurs adversaires de reconduire certaines formes de domination dans leur courant tout en leur reprochant l’inefficacité politique de leurs théorisations. La deuxième section permet de présenter le point de vue des féministes postmodernes, afin qu’elles puissent répliquer à ces critiques. Dans cette partie, elles cherchent à mettre en lumière le caractère hétérogène de leurs théories, à prouver l’utilité de leur pensée et elles critiquent à leur tour leurs adversaires. La dernière section espère ouvrir le débat sur de nouvelles perspectives féministes, en explicitant les grandes lignes de certaines pratiques politiques féministes alternatives et en exposant, à la suite de théoriciennes reconnues, les notions de féminisme à la carte et de féminisme « transmoderne ».

In its most common understanding, the term “gender” primarily refers today to the complementarity
of femininity and masculinity, understood in turn as psychosocial identities; and so it has been used also by
large sectors of feminism. This article aims to provide a synthetic overview of the effects produced by its
diffusion in medicine, psychiatry, academic knowledge production, the public sphere and social movements.
The point of departure will be the ongoing debate in Europe and Italy, where the category of gender
coagulates the hostility of Vatican elites and catholic integralist movements toward the achievements of civil
rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/transgender, queer and intersex people. This contrast is a clear
example of the semantic complexity of gender, a concept or better a conceptual device, which has in short
time produced numerous political cultures, often in conflict with each others.

Problems posed by the 'Anthropocene' have caused many feminists to rethink a feminist ethics in a post-anthropocentric vein. In this context, a reconceptualization of the notion of responsibility as response-ability or ability to respond has gained crucial relevance. This article reads ethics of response as feminist takes on problems posed by the Anthropocene, but also as attempts to conceptualize a non-normativist ethics working with and beyond post-structuralism. The theoretical challenge faced by a feminist post-anthropocentric ethics, the article argues, was posed by feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti as a confrontation of 'affirma-tion versus vulnerability'. In revisiting this debate, the article situates the notion of response-ability and outlines the theoretical questions which must be dealt with by an ethics of response: an integration of affirmation and negativity on one hand, and the question of the ethical and political implications of thinking from constitutive relationality on the other hand. By drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers, the article maps out one possible conceptualization of an ethics of response ability in more detail. It introduces the etho-ecological practice of responding as composing with otherness, which enables us to conceptualize the notion of response-ability as a concept underpinning a post-anthropocentric, feminist ethics for the Anthropocene.

Jill Schostak and I wrote this book as part of our evolving interest in doing research radically.  By radically we mean engaging with people's voices to learn how to create the conditions for social justice and for democratising all the organisations of everyday life.  We draw on our own research but also on the ways in which the media is used to shaw people's voices and behaviours.  We explore all the ways in which the desires and demands of elites are inscribed upon minds and bodies as well as how writing may create the conditions for counter inscriptions.  Writing research is to engage politically.  Whether it is the Arab Spring re-inscribing hopes for freedom, the Occupy Movement or young people challenging orthodoxies at home or in classrooms through use of the media, it is the power of writing in its broadest sense that makes the difference.

Chantal Mouffes gemeinsam mit Ernesto Laclau erarbeitete ‚postmarxistische‘ Theorie des Politischen ist derzeit der wohl meistdiskutierte Beitrag zum Thema Populismus. Mouffes und Laclaus Theorie stellt ein sowohl für den akademischen als auch den politischen und feuilletonistischen Diskurs attraktives Angebot dar: Sie gibt dem stets nach ‚Paradigmenwechseln‘ und Neologismen hungernden akademischen Betrieb eine neue ‚Beschreibung‘ der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit; sie gibt der politischen Verunsicherung angesichts des vermeintlichen Scheiterns bürgerlicher wie kommunistischer Emanzipations- und Fortschrittsideen sowie des Untergangs ihrer Träger (des rationalen Individuums bzw. der proletarischen ‚Klasse für sich‘) einen ‚kontingenztheoretischen‘ Ausdruck; sie bietet aber zugleich das Versprechen neuer politischer Handlungsfähigkeit, indem sie die mit Ohnmacht assoziierbare Kontingenz und ‚Intransparenz des Sozialen‘ sowie das Fehlen des einen adressierbaren, politisch gestaltenden Subjekts als Möglichkeit neuer ‚hegemonialer Projekte‘ und sozialer Bündnisse begreift. Dieses Versprechen politischer Handlungsfähigkeit ist besonders für eine Linke attraktiv, die sich von der pluralen Version einer neoliberalen Einheitspartei in den Metropolen abwenden und sich zugleich das Erstarken nationalistischer, autoritärer und faschistischer Kräfte erklären will, das unter dem Label des ‚Aufstiegs des Rechtspopulismus‘ gerade in aller Munde ist. Beide Tendenzen – die ‚There is no Alternative-Politik‘ von Sozialdemokratie und klassischen Neokonservativen und das Erstarken der populistischen Rechten – werden insbesondere von Mouffe in einen ursächlichen Zusammenhang gebracht. Als Heilmittel empfiehlt sie eine ‚antiessentialistische‘ linkspopulistische Strategie, die gegen ‚die neoliberalen Eliten‘ und die völkische Rechte zugleich gerichtet sein soll.
Im Folgenden werde ich diesen postmarxistischen Zugang zum Phänomen des Populismus darstellen und einige seiner Grundannahmen einer Kritik unterziehen. Die Grundthese lautet, dass der postmarxistische Ansatz eine irrationalistische Sozialontologie und ‚essentialistische‘ Massenpsychologie impliziert, die es nicht gestatten, den gegenwärtigen Populismus zu begreifen. Stattdessen bewegt sich Mouffe reflexionslos in populistischen Denkformen und Carl-Schmitt’schen Ideologemen, deren rationale Erklärung einer analytischen Sozialpsychologie in der Tradition der Kritischen Theorie obliegt. Es handelt sich dabei um eine Querfront von linken Theoretikern und Rechtsradikalen auf der Ebene der grundlegenden Beschreibung gesellschaftlicher Verhältnisse, die mit einer Ablehnung von Vernunft und moralischem Universalismus einhergeht und auf der politischen Ebene im Ressentiment gegen den Westen im allgemeinen, gegen die USA im Besonderen, besteht.

In this dissertation, I will consider the multiple trajectories of the thought of Michel Foucault in the 1970s and 1980s, offering an approach through which his writings on power and knowledge on one hand, and ethics and the self on the other can be understood fruitfully in relation to each other without being seen as representing a radical break in his work. I will do this by, first, locating the question of the subject and its formation within Foucault’s works on disciplinary power and sexuality, paving the way for this question to be revisited through his later writings on ethics. I will then consider how the development of Foucault’s ideas on power into biopower and governmentality enable an approach through which continuity within Foucault’s works can be identified through the relations between power, conduct and modes of individualisation. This will lead to considering Foucault’s genealogy of ethics and the modern subject not as a departure from his earlier ideas, but as the culmination of his interest in analysing knowledge, power and ethics. I will consider but go beyond the notions of aesthetics of existence and care of the self in Foucault’s discussion of ancient Greek and Hellenistic ethics in order to deal with his ideas on parrhēsia and truth-telling from his final lecture courses at the Collège De France that show that his late ideas reflect his earlier concerns. Therefore, by appealing to the conceptual developments within his writings as well as his approach to philosophical analysis, Foucault’s philosophical projects need not be seen as disparate and so the issue of continuity in his work can be raised and positively viewed.

Szanto’s study examines a collection of Twelver Shi’i children’s books from the Syrian shrine-town of Sayyida Zaynab. As there are few Twelver Shi’is and Shi’i publishers in Syria, the Shi’i children’s books are imported from Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. As a result, they reflect both local and regional conceptions and concerns. By drawing on the theoretical models offered by Judith Butler and Saba Mahmood, this article analyzes the processes of pious subject cultivation as well as the construction of religious authority through illustrated children’s books. It demonstrates how the nurturing of Shi’i subjects occurs in stages that emphasize affect, openness to authoritative others, and the acquisition and habituation of virtues. Within this general framework, there also exist differences in opinion with respect to precisely what kind of authorities pious Shi’is should relate to, emulate, and follow.

Las últimas décadas trajeron consigo la necesidad de revisar aquella noción de sujeto de derecho que posee una carga fuertemente individualista y se presenta como “ciega a las diferencias”. Pues gracias a la acción de minorías étnicas y religiosas, grupos de mujeres, gays, lesbianas y trans, entre otros, hemos ingresado al siglo XXI con una agenda novedosa y grandes cambios categoriales visibles tanto en el ámbito social, cultural como institucional. Pero muchas veces estas reivindicaciones, denunciando el etnocentrismo y la metafísica del individuo liberal ahistórico, se sustentan en un igualmente controvertido esencialismo colectivista que presenta a la comunidad como un todo orgánico y homogéneo. En este panorama, este trabajo intenta salir del dilema de los esencialismos a partir de una tarea deconstructiva que ni siquiera tenga como límite la materialidad del cuerpo. Sin embargo, entendiendo que disolver las identidades “posmodernamente” puede ir en detrimento de muchas de las conquistas conseguidas, asumiendo el carácter performativo y ficcional del lenguaje, se indagará en las posibilidades que un esencialismo estratégico puede brindar como herramienta de protección y emancipación de las minorías.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd on the 25th of May 2020 in the city of Minneapolis, a global anti-racist rupture in the fabric of racial capitalism has occurred. Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. Floyd after calling out “I can’t breathe!” was essentially choked to death on an open street. The act by Chauvin and the lack of action by the other police officers was captured through the cell phone cameras of bystanders. Despite this event happening under the conditions of the dispersion of the visual field and in an era of technological surveillance, the cops did what cops do.