Since World War II, the biological and technological have been fusing and merging in new ways, resulting in the loss of a clear distinction between the two. This entanglement of biology with technology isn't new, but the pervasiveness of that integration is staggering, as is the speed at which the two have been merging in recent decades. As this process permeates more of everyday life, the urgent necessity arises to rethink both biology and technology. Indeed, the human body can no longer be regarded either as a bounded entity or as a naturally given and distinct part of an unquestioned whole."Bits of Life" assumes a post-human definition of the body. It is grounded in questions about today's biocultures, which pertain neither to humanist bodily integrity nor to the anthropological assumption that human bodies are the only ones that matter. Editors Anneke Smelik and Nina Lykke aid in mapping changes and transformations and in striking a middle road between the metaphor and the material. In exploring current reconfigurations of bodies and embodied subjects, the contributors pursue a technophilic, yet critical, path while articulating new and thoroughly appraised ethical standards. Anneke Smelik is professor of visual culture at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Nina Lykke is professor of gender studies, Linkoeping University, Sweden, and head of the Nordic Research School in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies
The key note speech will discuss how ’postconstructionist’ onto-epistemologies, which take into account the entanglement of discourse and matter, and hence arts and sciences, can be useful for feminist theorizing. Examples will be taken from the work of feminist theorists such as Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, as well as from my own research on queerfeminist widowhood and corpomaterialist feminist approaches to death, dying and mourning.
Highlights the issues in feminist theory, epistemology and methodology. Combining introductory overviews with reflections, this title focuses on analytical approaches to gendered power differentials intersecting with other processes of social in/exclusion based on race, class and sexuality.
FEMINIST STUDIES is an advanced textbook. It balances cutting edge reflections with introductory overviews. The book addresses scholars and professionals in the field and functions as a guide for students and other newcomers to the area working in-between and inside of existing disciplines. Interpreting Feminist Studies as a postdisciplinary discipline, the book highights current issues in feminist theorizing of gender/sex and debates on epistemologies, methodologies, ethics and academic writing styles. In focus are feminist theories of gender/sex in intersections with other sociocultural categorizations (race, ethnicity, class, sexuality etc.) The genealogies of current theoretial approaches to gender/sex as a doing are also explored as well as feminist theories on intersections of sex and gender, bodily materiality, embodiment and subjectivity. Different feminist stances on epistemology are presented from standpoint, empiricist and poststructuralist feminisms to postconstructionist feminist moves into and beyond postmodern philosophy. Based on the assumption that writing and researching goes hand in hand, the book highlights feminist renegotiations of academic writing styles. FEMINIST STUDIES encourages transversal dialogues across all academic disciplines and across different branches of feminist theorizing giving particular attention to queer, postcolonial, anti-racist, historical materialist and sexual difference feminist stances as well as to critical studies of men.
Die Frage nach einem neuen Materialismus hat gegenwärtig quer durch die Disziplinen Konjunktur. Dabei wird Materie oder "Matter" nicht länger als passiver Träger von Bedeutung, Diskursen oder menschlicher Manipulation verstanden, sondern die Eigensinnigkeit und Kontingenz der materiellen Welt betont. Dieser Band versammelt Beiträge, die die bislang maßgeblich im englischsprachigen Raum und auf theoretischer Ebene stattfindende Debatte aufgreift und sie mit Blick auf ihr gesellschaftskritisches Potenzial diskutiert. Bei aller Diversität der disziplinären und thematischen Zugänge hebt der Band eine grundlegende Tendenz hervor. Zum einen die Unzufriedenheit über die gegenwärtigen gesellschaftlichen Zustände, zum anderen die Unfähigkeit gegenwärtiger Analysen, die aktuellen Bewegungen und Umbrüche in der Gesellschaft anschaulich zu machen. Die unterschiedlichen im Band vorgestellten Ansätze, Materie neu zu denken, nehmen diese Herausforderung an: Sie versuchen, soziale und politische Zusammenhänge in ihrer Komplexität zu erfassen ohne den kritischen Impetus des 'alten', marxistischen Materialismus aufzugeben. Dabei wird versucht, neomaterialistische Ansätze für unterschiedliche Bereiche der Gesellschaftskritik fruchtbar zu machen, darunter Ökonomiekritik, Biopolitik, Feminismus, Raumtheorie, Ästhetik, Technologie und kritische Theorie
With a starting point in a discussion of a taxonomy of gender research, developed by the Committee for Gender Research of the Swedish Research Council, the article suggests possible meanings of excellence in gender research and gives some recommendations for research politices.
With a point of departure in the notion of disidentification, the article argues that it is simplistic and reductionist to understand the histories of feminism via a mother-daughter-metaphor. Also the wave-metaphor which is often used to conceptualize these histories, are criticized as homogenizing and problematic.
Boken presenterar de centrala debatterna i internationell feministisk teori och diskuterar hur vetenskapsteoretiska och metodologiska frågor hanteras inom olika grenar av genusforskningen. Den tar också upp hur genusforskare har arbetat med att förändra akademiska genrer och skriftformer.
Boken är en guide till ett forskningsfält som präglas av teoretisk mångfald. Författaren lägger vikt vid att ge förklaringar och nyttiga tips för vidare studier av fältet, men utan att lyfta fram någon särskild tolkning eller väg genom landskapet som ”den rätta”. Det är upp till resenären själv att utveckla sin egen nyfi kenhet, sina egna passioner och tolkningar och till slut välja de riktningar som hon eller han vill röra sig i. Genusforskning riktar sig till forskare, lärare, studenter och andra som är intresserade av att hämta teoretisk och metodologisk inspiration från genusforskningens många olika grenar. Den har skrivits på ett sådant sätt att den kan användas både av nybörjaren inom genusforskningsfältet och av avancerade läsare som till exempel behöver en sparringpartner och dialog beträffande egna tolkningar av genusforskningens många olika teorier.
The chapter discusses the myth of Sweden as the most gender equal country in the world, seen from point of view of negative images projected onto Sweden in mainstream media in neighbouring country Denmark, which in some respects may stand in for more general international trends. Via two case studies, Danish media debates on the ’gender-neutral’ pedagogy of the kindergarden, Egalia, in Stockholm, and the Danish debates following in the wake of Swedish-Iranian journalist and poet Athena Farrokzhad’s review of Danish-Palestinian poet Yahya Hassan’s poetry collection in the Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet, the chapter pinpoints how Sweden is rendered as fundamentalist, but also exceptional in terms of the way in which issues of equality, gender, race, feminism and anti-racism are taken into account in the country. Against the background of the analysis, the chapter claims that it is important to unpack these debunking and anti-Swedish discourses on Swedish ’equality fundamentalism’, produced outside of Sweden, among others because they contribute to confirm the myth of Sweden as exceptionally (gender) equal, glossing over actual inequalities in Sweden.
The chapter reflects on teaching practices, aimed at encouraging and empowering students in feminist classrooms to engage in learning processes allowing them to unfold skills in terms of critical social fantasy, imagining alternative futures, based on everyday utopian thinking, and to translate them into transformative professional work. The pivot is a generic skill, defined as the ability to unfold critically enabling and empowering social fantasy apt for working to foster more socially and environmentally just futures. The reflections o this generic skill is based on the author’s decades long experiences of teaching Gender and Intersectionality Studies and commitment to curriculum development within the field in European and Scandinavian contexts. A particular case is used as example: a course on Career Paths and Professional Communication, cast within the framework of an international master programme in Gender Studies – Intersectionality and Change, as the programme’s arena for thinking about future workplaces. It is shown how feminist conceptual tools, the concepts of figurations and worldings, and transgressive methods, creative writing and theatrical acting, can be used to prompt learning processes, building on embodied thinking-feeling, and nurturing the unfolding of the mentioned generic skill.
The chapter puts focus on the concept of intersectionality, arguing that it is important always to contextualize and situate it. But it is also underlined how its capacities for rhizomatic flight and for teasing out tensions and conflicts between different strands of feminist theory and politics, might be used for posing new political questions and thinking through pressing theoretical issues. Referring to a couple of examples from the history of feminist theorizing, where political and theoretical struggles over intersections have come forcefully to the fore, it is suggested that moments such as these can be re-read as moments of becoming of a kind of in-depth theoretical and passionate political intersectional analysis.
The chapters presents a concept of intersectional genderpedagogy, and introduces approaches to the practice of this pedagogy in university classrooms.
In this chapter, I want to examine what an intersectional understanding of gender can mean for gender pedagogy and for handling learning processes in the classroom. I begin by presenting a working definition of intersectional gender. Thereafter, I discuss the meaning of intersectional gender pedagogy. I conclude with a suggestion of how groups may work with intersectional gender in the classroom.
The article discusses the concept of intersectionality and its meaning for gender research. Genealogies of intersectional thinking in different kinds of feminist theory are traced, and the current use of the concept is discussed. A pragmatic model for intersectional analysis is, moreover, suggested.
When I juxtaposed two historical icons, Sojourner Truth and Alexandra Kollontai, in a chapter on genealogies of intersectionality (Lykke 2010), transversal dialogue partner, Sirma Bilge (2013), criticized me for whitewashing intersectionality. Reflecting on the critique, I take Bilge’s point about keeping the concept of intersectionality genealogically within Black Feminist theoretical and activist traditions. Situating my reflections in a postsocialist feminism and my position as Europe-based feminist activist and academic with a trajectory back to the socialist feminist 1970s, I also question the role of whiteness and eurocentrism of Marxism and Marxist class analysis in terms of embedding radically, class conscious, anti-(neo)liberalist socialist feminisms in epistemologies of ignorance as regards race and racism.
The article is a reprint of an article from 2003 - reprinted as part of a celebration of the 40 years anniversary of the Swedish Gender Studies journal, Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift/Tidskrift för genusvetenskap. The article presents the concept of "intersectionality" and argues for its usefulness for feminist research against the background of feminist debates in the year of ift first publication.
The book chapter discusses different types of intersectional gender research - with a focus on Swedish examples. Explicitly intersectional gender research is illustrated by postcolonial feminist theorizing (Mulinari & de Los Reyes). Implicitly intersectional gender research is illustrated by feminist marxist theorizing (Jónasdóttir) and by queerfeminist theorizing (Rosenberg).
Den här skriften handlar om genusvetenskapens pedagogiska och didaktiska verksamhet. Den handlar om vad som händer i det genusvetenskapliga klassrummet, hur lärandeprocesserna och utmaningarna ser ut och vad som betraktas som viktiga pedagogiska ställningstaganden. Den handlar om hur lärare i genusvetenskap på olika sätt arbetar för att skapa goda villkor för lärande, för alla, och den handlar om vad som är svårt i maktkritiska lärandeprocesser och vad som är den genusvetenskapliga pedagogikens styrkor.
Although often absent from the considerations of philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists, the material dimension plays an important and even essential role in the practices of the sciences. "Chasing Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality" begins to redress this absence by bringing together four prominent figures who make technoscience, or science embodied in its technologies, a central theme of their work. Through lively personal interviews and substantive essays, the ideas of Andrew Pickering, Don Ihde, Donna Haraway, and Bruno Latour are brought to bear on the question of materiality in technoscience. The work of these theorists is then compared and critiqued in essays by colleagues. "Chasing Technoscience" is a ground-breaking, state-of-the-art look at current developments in technoscience.
This is a response to feminist researcher Sara Edenheim's comment to earlier article by Nina Lykke on generational feminism
The book gives a comprehensive introduction to feminist studies, understood as a postdisciplinary discipline. It gives an overview of current debates in international feminist theorizing, and discusses how epistemological and methodological issues are conceptualized and understood within different branches of feminist studies. Relations between epistemologies, methodologies and writing practices are also highlighted.
Paperet giver et overblik over nyere feministisk teori og postkonstruktionistiske videnskabsforståelser ikønsforskningen. Det lægges især vægt på, hvordan feministisk teori ser subjektet som skabt i intersektioner mellem køn og andre sociale kategoriseringer, og hvordan begreber som disidentifikation i forhold til stereotype forestillinger om subjektivitet og hverdagsutopiske forestillinger om forandringspraksisser spiller en rolle.
With a focus on global cancer epidemics, the article discusses biopolitics in the Anthropocene against the background of a notion of dual governmentality, implying that efforts to make populations live and tendencies to let them die are intertwined. The conceptualization is based on postcolonial scholar Achille Mbembes notion of necropolitics and cultural critic Lauren Berlants notion of slow death, developing Foucauldian understandings of biopower. Liver cancer and breast cancer serve as cases showing the operations of an Anthropocene necropolitics, that is, its modes of working through political neglect of carcinogenic effects of conditions of poverty in postcolonial capitalism and chemical modernity. The article introduces Anthropocene necropolitics as an analytics, useful for a critical understanding of the global cancer epidemics. But it aims also to transgress a merely critical approach and to contribute to the search for critically affirmative points of exit into new and more promising worlding practices. Therefore, it engages in the discussion of the Anthropocene concepts lack of potentials to go beyond critique. Instead, the author tries out Donna Haraways proposal to complement the Anthropocene concept with the figuration of Chthulucene, calling for a shift of ethical stance and position of enunciation from the sovereign (white, Western) "I," waging "war" on cancer to a "we," based on a planetwide kinship of vulnerable bodies. Underlining that this shift can also commit to alternative modes of writing, the article ends with a poem, "Anthropos and the Canary in the Mine." The poem situates the analysis in the entanglement of political, ethical, theoretical, and personal passions brought about by the authors process of mourning her life partners cancer death.
With a focus on global cancer epidemics, the article discusses biopolitics in the Anthropocene, against the background of a notion of dual governmentality, implying that efforts to make populations live and tendencies to let them die are intertwined. The conceptualization is based on postcolonial scholar Achille Mbembe’s notion of necropolitics and cultural critic Lauren Berlant’s notion of slow death, developing Foucauldian understandings of biopower. Liver cancer and breast cancer serve as cases showing the operations of an Anthropocene necropolitics, i.e. its modes of working through political neglect of carcinogenic effects of conditions of poverty in postcolonial capitalism and chemical modernity. The article introduces Anthropocene necropolitics as an analytics, useful for a critical understanding of the global cancer epidemics. But it aims also to transgress a merely critical approach and to contribute to the search for critically-affirmative points of exit into new and more promising worlding practices. Therefore, it engages in the discussion of the Anthropocene-concept’s lack of potentials to go beyond critique. Instead, the author tries out Donna Haraway’s proposal to complement the Anthropocene-concept with the figuration of Chthulucene, calling for a shift of ethical stance and position of enunciation from the sovereign (white, western) ‘I’, waging ‘war’ on cancer (Sontag 1991, Proctor 1995) to a ‘we’, based on a planetwide kinship of vulnerable bodies. Underlining that this shift can also commit to alternative modes of writing, the article ends with a poem, ‘Anthropos and the Canary in the Mine’. The poem situates the analysis in the entanglement of political, ethical, theoretical and personal passions, brought about by the author’s process of mourning her life partner’s cancer death.
The chapter aims to contribute to a rethinking of queer kinship on new-materialist grounds, while critically-affirmatively transgressing the discourse-theoretical and voluntaristic concept, families of choice. Drawing on the author’s poetic-philosophic research on death, dying, mourning and afterlife in queerfeminist and new-materialist perspectives, the chapter discusses the agency of corpoaffective bonds in the context of rainbow kinship relations. In accordance with the method of autophenomenography and the author’s further development of it within the framework of a posthuman phenomenology of mourning, and her use of poetic writing as a method of inquiry, the analytical material is autobiographical, poetic texts. The texts explore intense corpoaffective moments, related to the author’s lesbian life partner’s cancerdeath. Based on an immanence philosophical analysis of death as becoming-imperceptible, the author suggests that her partner’s death made her and her rainbow kin co-experience an affective void, to which they responded through collectively shared mourning practices. It is discussed how the collective mourning for the author meant that her relations to her rainbow kin intensified, calling forward a corpoaffective move from her earlier identification as lesbian co-mother to a desire to subjectively fill the void mother space. Furthermore, the chapter puts focus on the agency of temporalities in the formation of intergenerational rainbow kinship.
In Deleuzian philosophy, death is theorized as a becoming-imperceptible. In my poetic and autophenomenographic reflections on death, dying and mourning, following my long-term partner’s death from cancer some years ago, I have been in dialogue with Deleuzian frameworks as well as with neovitalist feminist materialist philosophies (Braidotti 2006, Bennett 2010). The above title is inspired by these dialogues, and this will also be my point of departure in the presentation. However, prompted by desires to move beyond the imperceptible, I have also taken other paths, one relating to indigenous cosmologies, another to queer ecologies. The possible intersections of these paths are explored in the paper.