Catherine Malabou: Post-Gender Theory and the Feminine

12/5/2014, 21:00h, Cinema Europa, Zagreb, Croatia
International Conference, 7th Subversive festival: "Power and Freedom in the time of Control"
Catherine Malabou: Post-Gender Theory and the Feminine
Moderator: Željka Matijašević

Starting with Sartre's essay Anti-Semite and the Jew, in which he defines the Jew negatively as a creation of the anti-Semite, I will use the same method and ask myself whether the feminine could be understood in a non-essentialist way, as the creation of machism and anti-women violence. I will also question the tendency to erase the categories of the feminine and masculine in gender theory, and examine whether this gesture of erasure is a part of that same violence.

Catherine Malabou
Professor in the Philosophy Department at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at the Kingston University. Central to Malabou's philosophy is the concept of "plasticity," which she derives in part from the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and from medical science. Her book, Les nouveaux blessés (2007), concerns the intersection between neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and philosophy, thought through the phenomenon of trauma. Coinciding with her exploration of neuroscience has been an increasing commitment to political philosophy. This is first evident in her book What Should We Do With Our Brain? and continues in her book on feminism (Changer de différence, le féminin et la question philosophique, Galilée, 2009).

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