Professional Documents
Culture Documents
BALZA, ISABEL
Universidad de Jan
Qu pueden los cuerpos: pensando una biopoltica feminista desde Spinoza
Los paradigmas conceptuales y polticos que han operado con la divisin de la vida entre bos y
zo, entre una vida humana y otra animal, una vida con forma y otra informe, han derivado en
polticas de la muerte. Tanto Agamben como Esposito insisten en que una versin liberal de la
ontologa desecha un mbito del ser humano a lo informe, para acabar siendo destruido. Tambin
Judith Butler va a incidir en esta cuestin, y aunque reconozca la necesidad de una perspectiva
liberal sobre la autonoma del sujeto y la propiedad del cuerpo, encuentra que ello no es
suficiente. Por ello encuentra que es urgente articular y defender algn otro tipo de proyecto
normativo.
Este es el propsito que se plantea Butler en los textos que publica tras los atentados del 11S.
Entiendo que su proyecto es el de una biopoltica afirmativa, en tanto que trata de concebir un
modo de la comunidad poltica que acoja la vulnerabilidad original de los sujetos, y creo que su
nocin de vida precaria trata de ligar bos y zo en un nuevo concepto de vida. Lo que Butler
nos presenta es un panorama de los dispositivos de la biopoltica negativa, que ya haba trazado
antes en sus Cuerpos que importan al analizar los mecanismos de exclusin referidos a la
sexuacin y las sexualidades. Ahora se fija en los marcos raciales y tnicos que juegan en las
prcticas de borramiento y rechazo de lo humano. Y entiende, al igual que Agamben y Esposito,
que stos marcan dos esferas separadas de la vida, una vida humana bos y otra vida como
mera condicin biolgica zo.
La ontologa que Butler se propone construir piensa la corporalidad como el mbito que permite
articular un nuevo modo de la comunidad poltica, porque es la corporalidad y no ya el alma o
el espritu la que dota de transcendencia al ser humano. Butler invierte as el paradigma liberal
poniendo el acento sobre la materialidad y carnalidad de los sujetos, insistiendo en que es el
cuerpo y no ya el alma o la razn lo que de modo privilegiado permite vincularnos unos a otros.
De ah que proclame una insurreccin a nivel ontolgico.
Lo que quiero plantear en este trabajo es que la poltica de la vida que Butler nos propone slo
podr ser articulada si la remitimos a un concepto de vida y de corporalidad que recoja la tradicin
spinoziana. Ya autoras como Moira Gatens, Elizabeth Grosz, Rosi Braidotti o Hasana Sharp han
llevado a cabo una interpretacin de la filosofa spinoziana en clave feminista, sealando la
necesidad de considerar la corporalidad desde los planteamientos de Spinoza. Me propongo, por
tanto, tratar de pensar qu modo de la biopoltica productiva puede ser construida a partir de los
conceptos de vida, cuerpo y potencia de Spinoza, viendo en qu sentido esta expresin de la
biopoltica permite al feminismo articular un lugar para los cuerpos, en tanto que se constituye
como una poltica de la vida y no de la muerte.
BUCK, TAYLOR
Central European University
Schizophrenia in Femnist Social Change Models: Understanding and Incorporating Women with
Severe Mental Illness
I explore, through a proposal of three strategies, where feminist formations of mental illness and
therapy have neglected the needs of women with schizophrenia, and where work can be done to
adequately incorporate the views, voices, ideas and needs of mentally ill women within a feminist
social work/social change framework. Severe mental illnesses, like other traits that are
systemically stigmatized, must be adequately recognized and understood in order to cultivate
truly inclusive, trans-boundary feminist philosophies and activisms.
CHIRICOSTA, ALESSANDRA
IAPh Italia
On Female Force: body and politics
This paper wants to explore the concept and the dynamics of women's body force as a mean
to overcome one of the most insidious and hard-to-remove stereotype on woman's nature: to
be phisically weak.
Basing on an approach that combines philosophy of difference and intercultural philosophy, the
paper aims at describing how the idea that a female body is weaker by its own definition rely
on the assumption that the physical force can be measured only in quantitative terms. It also
endorses he cartesian division between body and mind and its related conception that mind can
control the body. This assumption can be questioned by observing different conceptions of the
body, such as those that originates in the context of some East Asian martial arts.
According to these philosophies and practices (wing chung and tai ji quan, to give an example),
the female body can express its own force, different from the male one in qualitative terms, but
that in any case cannot be defined as inferior. The paper wants to show how the internalization
of the idea that a female body is weaker has led to dynamics of personal, social and political
exposure to violence, in which women risk to perceive themselves as potential victims, rather
than subjects which are able to decide when, why and if they wants to use their own force.
Furthermore, the paper wants to show how the awareness of female body force can open new
spaces of theoretical inquiry on the meanings of violence and force, on power dynamics between
different genders that are rooted not only in culture in its general sense, but also (and above
all) are engendered in cultural bodies, i.e. in the process of meaning-giving to one's own body
that each member of a cultural context is involved in.
FREEDMAN, KARYN
University of Guelph
Epistemic Akrasia and the Body
Feminist philosophers have drawn important theoretical insights through reflection on our bodily
experiences. In this paper I shall aim to do the same. Drawing on contemporary scientific results
on psychological trauma, and grounding these results in my personal experience as a rape
survivor, I will offer an insight into the contemporary debates around the possibility of epistemic
akrasia.
Someone who displays practical akrasia exhibits a failure of control, but not an absence of
control. The akratic individual intentionally and voluntarily acts in a way that is contrary to what
she judges she ought to do. I tuck into a large piece of cheesecake even though I know I ought
not to, or I light up a cigarette although I have avowed to quit. In cases of akrasia practical
judgments go in different directions; the agent acts against her best or better judgment in the
face of a temptation to act to the contrary. I want the cheesecake and the cigarette, and I act on
those wants even though more importantly I want to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle.
Practical akrasia may look irrational, indeed arguably it is, but it is not impossible.
What, however, about epistemic akrasia? Is it possible to freely and intentionally believe
something which one judges one ought not to believe? Some have argued for this possibility and
others against it, but in a certain respect both sides in the debate fall short.
In this paper I will agree with Adler (2002) and others that epistemic akrasia is impossible, but I
argue that those who maintain otherwise are onto something. The examples offered in the
literature share a similar structure, and while they are misconstrued as instances of epistemic
akrasia, they do indeed pick up on a legitimate phenomenon. These cases are characterized by
that funny feeling we get in cases of practical akrasia, that same dread and anxiety when it seems
to us that our judgments about what we ought to believe diverge from what we choose to believe.
But these cases are not, in fact, instances of two judgments coming apart, despite how it may
seem. Drawing on contemporary results in neuroscience, in particular the research on
psychological trauma, I show that the divergence in question is between a judgment, on the one
hand, and a bodily or somatic response, on the other. Illustrating this conclusion by drawing on
my own experience as a rape survivor, I argue that somatic responses do not aim at truth, nor are
they regulated for truth strongly or weakly since they are not, in the first place, cognitive.
HALSEMA, ANNEMIE
VU- University
Sometimes I think: o yes, I miss something
Losing your breast and feminity
Although the female breast seems to symbolize the core of femininity (beauty, motherhood,
sexuality, (passive) object of lust), the actual loss of one breast, or both, does not necessarily
result in a loss of femininity. Apparently there is a discrepancy between sensing and feeling ones
body and the public appearance of ones body. This paper aims at a feminist philosophical
reflection upon femininity as related to the experience of losing ones breast.
The paper draws on interviews with women who have undergone breast surgery (mastectomy or
lumpectomy) after the diagnosis of breast cancer. The data are obtained in the research project
Bodily Integrity in Blemished Bodies by Dr. J. Slatman (CAPHRI, Metamedica/HES, University
Maastricht, The Netherlands). In two to three successive interviews, nineteen women have been
questioned about identification with their changed body. In the paper, I will concentrate upon
the question of choice for keeping ones breast or amputation, and upon the womens reflections
about breast reconstructions. While some women go through tiresome medical investigations in
order to save their breast, others immediately decide that it should go. What do both reactions
imply for ones sense of ones body and how do these reactions relate to the womans sense of
femininity? Does health and getting rid of ones illness outdo the importance of feeling
feminine, or is sense of femininity a more complicated experience?
ISAACS, TRACY
Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
Food Insecurity: Dieting as Ideology, as Opression, and as Privilege
Feminists have been talking about the oppressive nature of the feminine body ideal since Susie
Orbachs Fat is a Feminist Issue came out in the early eighties. In 1996, Susan Bordo wrote about
Hunger as Ideology. She argued that womens relationship to food, as depicted in popular
culture and advertising should be considered as gender ideology because it reproduces gender
oppression.
Women, even girls, are still starving themselves in order to be thin, that photoshop has made the
ideal even more unattainable, and that arguably more women are on diets than are not on diets
at any given time in the Western world.
Recently, however, multiple studies have shown that diets do not work. Not only do they not lead
to weight loss, but several studies show that chronic dieters are more likely to experience weight
gain over the long run. Yet we in the west cling to dieting as an ideology not to be questioned.
At the same time as we in the West are obsessed with diets and weight loss, on an international
global scale there is a food security crisis. At the World Food Summit in 1996, food security was
defined as existing when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to
maintain
a
healthy
and
active
life
[from
the
WHO
website,
http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story028/en/]. At this time in the history of the world, food
security and the related issues of food justice and food sovereignty are serious development
issues. In stark contrast to the obsession with diet and weight loss among the privileged
populations of North America and Europe, the majority of the worlds people do not have the
luxury of dieting for weight loss.
I argue that analyses such as Bordos, which see the ideology surrounding dieting as largely
oppressive, still capture a well-entrenched form of gender control today. However, dieting is also
an ideology of privilege, bringing into sharp focus the disparate relationship people in different
parts of the world and in different socioeconomic circumstances have with food. Given the global
concern about food security, we might think of dieting, whether successful or doomed, as an
ideology of privilege, unique to those who have the means to make choices, even if that choice is
to starve.
My talk has three parts. First, I review some of the key contributions of the eighties and early
nineties on the topic of women, food, weight loss, and body image. I argue that there are still
good reasons to think of dieting and weight loss as an ideology that deeply affects women in the
West. Then, I consider the global context, and argue that global issues of food security throw the
Western obsession with dieting into a different light. I conclude by arguing that the dieting
ideology reveals privilege more than oppression.
LEE, JIUN
Department of Philosophy, Ewha Womans University
Technogender and Body Politics: Donna J. Haraways Cyborg Feminism
In recent years, numerous studies have attempted to find and explore the changing gendered
cultural and political issues in our digital eras possibilities. An atypically discussed theme
influencing gender relationships and politics is the digital convergence that influences both art
culture and biology. Especially interesting from my point of view are two themes: first, how a
previous gendered approach to art and technology came under critique; and second, how the
digital era itself has had a libratory effect. I think these changes provided women a platform for
novel possibilities for gendered artistic expression and body politics due to these once stable
gender issues progressively can be technologically arbitrated.
I will argue that feminist scholars have built a special techno-feminist relationship. I examine
feminist philosophers for themes of cyborg technology, feminism, and body politics issues. The
study of Donna J. Haraway is discussed and framed for commonalities and differences of opinion
with other feminist philosophers concerning this new gender politics. I will focus particularly on
Haraways Modest-Witness@Second-Millenium. FemaleMan-Meets-OncoMouse: Feminism and
Technoscience, 1997. The changed artistic and biological possibilities expose women and
particularly women artists to a progressively technologically mediated world. This article
describes and explores some changes in gender consciousness and its politics in our digital art
era.
Es posible una categora epistemolgica que busque indicios de las otras identidades posibles
en m? Es posible una teora que observe a los cuerpos sujetndose performativamente y, al
mismo tiempo, desbordndose de su condicin ya constituida como sujetos? Estas preguntas
fueron inspiradas a raz de la lectura de los textos Judith Butler, sobre todo aquellos en los que
vuelve a pensar los conceptos del psicoanlisis sobre las identificaciones melanclicas para
explicar el gnero y el deseo. Butler piensa sobre los otros constitutivos del yo a partir de las
identificaciones que han sido excluidas y repudiadas por efecto de una determinada economa
del deseo. Estas identificaciones son pertinentes en la medida en que son constitutivas de los
sujetos, del cuerpo, del sexo, de la sexualidad y del gnero, como efectos de un proceso basado
en la prohibicin de algunos objetos amados. La heterosexualidad, en cuanto que rgimen de
poder productivo, se funda sobre la abyeccin de la homosexualidad y su consiguiente
prohibicin. El rechazo, el repudio y la abyeccin son, de acuerdo con Butler que sigue a
Foucault-, los modos en que se aplica la Ley.
Para Butler, el gnero es el efecto de la melancola. La identificacin melanclica es esencial para
explicar cmo el yo asume su carcter de gnero y, cmo ste llega a ser en virtud de la
negacin fundacional y constitutiva de la homosexualidad (2001b, 148). Pero para m, el alcance
de la teora de Butler supera la lectura genealgica de la homosexualidad y permite pensar de
otro modo lo humano, la diferencia sexual y la identidad de gnero. Es el punto de partida
necesario para enfrentarse al problema del gnero, un problema que impide a muchas personas
la vida como seres humanos y sujetos de derecho; problema que, sin embargo, parece que no se
ha abordado polticamente de modo apropiado.
De las cuestiones iniciales surge una propuesta de teorizacin a partir de una categora
epistemolgica que observe e instituya en los discursos las diferencias identitarias que estn en
nosotros y nosotras, en la medida en que son las formas posibles en que nuestro deseo deviene.
Formas que contradicen los patrones identitarios del gnero, y del deseo, especialmente las que
imponen una identidad estable y naturalizada. Estas diferencias estn en nuestros cuerpos,
considerados como realidades significantes en virtud de un lenguaje heterosexual, de una
disposicin simblica o semitica que los codifica para que tengan sentido de hombre o mujer.
La teora epistemolgica permite establecer una categora de pensamiento que observe a los
cuerpos con otros parmetros diferentes a los de la heterosexualidad, observando indicios de
otros gneros, otros deseos, otras identidades posibles ocultas por el ordenamiento
heterosexual. Rasgos identitarios y relaciones con los otros y las otras que ya se estn
produciendo, que ya son realidad.
Es preciso, por tanto, instituir unas nuevas lentes que incluyan aspectos fundamentales ocultos
en la heterogeneidad de lo real, que observen a los seres humanos desde la hiptesis de una
identidad de lmites construidos, contingentes e histricos, y, consecuentemente, la posibilidad
de su movilidad, haciendo menos pertinente la necesidad de la afirmacin identitaria y creando
las condiciones para producir desplazamientos de sentido en el gnero.
diferencia sexual por revalorizar el cuerpo femenino.Una lectura desde el feminismo marxista
actual, como la que realiza Silvia Federici en Calibn y la bruja, interpreta, por otra parte, la
expropiacin del cuerpo femenino como fenmeno paralelo a la expropiacin de las tierras
comunales en la transicin al capitalismo y sus formas violentas de instauracin, en lo que Marx
denomin la acumulacin originaria. Desde esta lectura se concluye que hay que recuperar el
cuerpo, el lugar de la naturaleza, los vnculos comunales e identitarios que estn inscritos como
significado en la corporalidad de las mujeres. Y si extraemos esta consecuencia no andaramos
muy lejos del discurso de la diferencia sexual. Pero si lo que se propone es revalorizar el cuerpo
femenino, habr que preguntarse qu se est revalorizando. Una revisin de las tesis sobre el
cuerpo en el sentido de Foucault, Bourdieu o Butler evidencia que el sujeto vive su cuerpo,
socialmente destinado, como proyecto propio y no como resultado de la lgica social. Estas tesis
han tenido un gran eco en el panorama del pensamiento feminista y tambin del feminismo en
general.
Cabe aventurar que ni las versiones ms radicalmente constructivistas del cuerpo, ni las
simplificadoramente esencialistas dan cuenta completa de que el cuerpo s pesa, si no como
forma de ser, s como forma de estar, como acto o como prctica, que componen itinerarios
corporales (como lo denomina la antroploga Mari Luz Esteban), que no por no constituir
esencias sustantivas dejan de ser reales.
Desde esta comprensin ms amplia de cuerpo, hay que preguntarse tambin en qu mundo
queremos que tal cuerpo est. Ahora bien, esta comunicacin no se asocia con aquellas
posiciones que leen la vinculacin entre lo femenino y el cuerpo como el lugar donde es posible
recuperar las formas de relacin, el cuidado y la lgica no regida por las inter-relaciones
mercantilistas. Esta es, por ejemplo, la propuesta de Silvia Federici. Esta es tambin la posicin
de otros feminismos insertos en una visin ms comunitarista, o bien ms defensora del
pensamiento de la diferencia sexual. Una ltima reflexin que se impone es que no se trata de
concluir la irrelevancia del cuerpo, ni de negar su materialidad. Se trata de pensar el cuerpo de
otra manera y de disociarlo de la identificacin con lo femenino. Porque, de otro modo,
quedaramos presas de ese discurso patriarcal que veta a las mujeres su capacidad de
trascendencia. Una trascendencia que ha de estar guiada por los intereses en un mundo mejor,
desde una lgica que aspire a no reproducir sin ms las coordenadas dominantes de
pensamiento. Se trata, en fin, de revalorizar para todos/todas una tica del cuidado y de la
solidaridad, unas relaciones de inter-dependencia, que, ms all y ms ac de su cuerpo, las
mujeres conocen y pueden ensear.
POSTL, GERTRUDE
Suffolk County Community College
Citationality as Feminist Practice: of Slutwalks, Dildos, and Reading Famous Philosophers
In this proposed paper I want to discuss Citationality as a feminist practice in a political and
theoretical sense. In the contemporary political climate it is difficult to determine which practices
can be considered feminist and which actually undermine the feminist project. Patriarchy cannot
be criticized or attacked from a distance or from the outside there is no outside of patriarchy.
We are always already in the midst of a signifying system which keeps women (and any other
groups which deviate from the heterosexual norm) under control, oppressed, and exploited. The
only way to respond to this situation of hermetic totality is to turn elements of this system against
itself, to resignify key building blocks of the patriarchal machinery so as to produce cracks,
irritations, unexpected encounters, undecidable phenomena, new open spaces. Drawing upon
Judith Butlers notions of resignification and of parody it shall be shown how the dominant order
abstracta moderna. Por ello, en tanto que politiza la sexualidad y la construccin de su deseo, al
tiempo que sirve a la desigualdad estructural de gnero y a la feminizacin de la pobreza, de
acuerdo con la condena histrica que hasta el siglo XIX ha limitado las funciones del cuerpo
femenino a ser o bien vendido en el mercado, o bien alienado en el matrimonio, se hace preciso
analizar, una vez ms, los argumentos del polmico y polarizado debate entre abolicionistas y
regulacionistas. De un lado, frente al abolicionismo, cabe preguntarse: silencia la voz de las
trabajadoras sexuales?, alimenta el rol femenino de ser perennes vctimas y sujetos vulnerables
de acuerdo a la divisin patriarcal?, se trata de un sector del feminismo moralmente
conservador con secularizados valores cristianos en su comprensin del sexo y la sexualidad? De
otro, contra el regulacionismo, podemos igualmente lanzar interrogantes que sealen las luces y
sombras de su discurso: est su defensa de eleccin laboral en el caso de las trabajadoras
sexuales limitada a una irrestricta nocin liberal de la libertad que, por contrapartida, invisibiliza
la trata?, cules son sus argumentos ms all de la descalificacin de su oponente?, legitima al
heteropatriarcado contribuyendo, con ello, tanto a la dominacin de las mujeres como a los
intereses del capitalismo? No obstante, en la exposicin de los argumentos y fallas de ambos
bloques no trataremos nicamente de realizar un consabido estado de la cuestin de la
problemtica exclusivamente descriptivo, sino, antes bien, de lograr esbozar un pacto de mnimos
en aquellos frentes en los que ambas posturas s parecen encontrarse de acuerdo: la lucha contra
la trata de personas y el reconocimiento de derechos para la agencia femenina.
ZEHETNER, BETTINA
Department of Philosophy, Vienna, Austria
Please tell me: Am I Normal? - Feminist psychosocial counselling
In counselling processes many women express their desire to be normal, a normal woman.
The conflicts and symptoms that result from this desire motivates my interest in the power of
gender norms. Gender and disease are tightly connected in their normative dimension. This
perspective is a challenge for the traditional system of medical knowledge and practice.
In psychosomatic phenomena like hysterical conversion with its transformation of an inner
conflict into a symptom of the body and eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia the normative
construction of femininity manifests itself as embodiment. Disease patterns re-establish gender
differences. Gendered bodies and minds are re-produced in clinical diagnostics and treatment.
Gender
specific
forms
of
diseases
demonstrate
how
gender
specific
norms can cause distress and here lies a critical potential for exploration. So-called female
disorders (Frauenkrankheiten) show the exaggerated stereotypes of how women are defined
and are expected to behave in a certain culture at a certain time. I use Judith Butlers concept of
the performative constitution of gender to investigate some psychosomatic disease patterns. I
want to analyze the relation between body and language, gender and power in the psychosomatic
phenomena of hysteria, eating disorders, self-mutilating behaviour and psychogenic pain.
I want to connect the theory of discursive construction of femininity with the practice of feminist
psychosocial counselling. Feminist psychosocial counselling modifies the definition of disease by
considering it healthy not to function smoothly under intolerable conditions. Feminist counselling
is not interested in declaring certain behavior as pathological, but in the perception and critique
of social conditions that put pressure on women and cause disease. In this way constructivist
feminist theory can have liberating effects in psychosocial counselling, e.g. the enhancement of
perspectives and agency.
Judith Butlers concept of performativity opens up new perspectives on feminist agency. I would
like to transfer this politicized notion of everyday behavior into the psychosocial counselling with
women. The strategy of gender parody can be used in counselling processes.
The perspective of normative constitution of femininity and masculinity provides a new approach
to the relations of psyche and body, gender and society. No body and no gender exists outside of
the processes of sociocultural construction of meaning. This multi-layered constitution of body
and gender requires a new approach to psychosomatic connections in the medical diagnostic
system. It also requires the enhancement of merely individual- and family-centered therapeutic
concepts. With a feminist position counselling becomes more than the simple elimination of
symptoms and better functioning in the given system. My work as a feminist counsellor serves as
an example for the conflicting mediation of feminist theory and practice. Feminist philosophy can
operate as an emancipating practice in psychosocial counselling.