2/02/2018
Critique of the State II: The critique of the nation-state in regard to feminist and gender critique
February 2, 2018
13:00-16:00 | Room G-2
Paris 8 University
2, Rue de la Liberté – 93526 Saint-Denis
Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun (Paris 7 / Medfil Humanities Institute):
“Masculinity as a political category of domination”
In a now classic text, the American historian Joan Scott has defined gender, which she carefully distinguishes from “biological sex” as “a primary way of signifying power relations”, constituting, according to her, social relations based on perceived differences. According to her, it involves four series of elements: firstly culturally available symbols and symbolic representations, secondly normative concepts, thirdly a notion of the political with reference to institutions and social organization, and finally what pertains to subjective identity. Gender therefore refers to the relations of masculine and feminine, to “a primary field within which, or by means of which power is articulated”. We can extrapolate by observing, within what could be called a “general anthropology” that the masculine refers to domination while the feminine signifies and symbolizes submission. This binary opposition is therefore a social institution, not a fact of nature. It can therefore be transgressed at the risk and peril of those who venture there. The transgressions will interest us only for what they teach us about the reiteration of the norm, in its multiple aspects. The masculine is declined, in fact, under different figures which all refer to an image of power. It can therefore be transgressed at the risk and peril of those who venture there. The transgressions will interest us only for what they teach us about the reiteration of the norm, in its multiple aspects. The masculine is declined, in fact, under different figures which all refer to an image of power. It can therefore be transgressed at the risk and peril of those who venture there. The transgressions will interest us only for what they teach us about the reiteration of the norm, in its multiple aspects. The masculine is declined, in fact, under different figures which all refer to an image of power.
Eléni Varikas (CRESPPA-Paris 8):
“For a feminist theory of politics”
Is it possible to reread the concepts, axioms and presuppositions that have long served to delegitimize exclusion, submission and obedience, to put them at the service of a democratic redefinition of citizenship? Reconcile complementarity with individual autonomy and self-definition of women? Transform the metaphor of the “political body” into a metaphor of a divided power? The main advantage of this metaphor is precisely that it excludes multiplicity from the outset. An androgynous body, a body with two sexes, with varied characteristic features and different colors, is by definition monstrous: this is the message transmitted for centuries by this gigantic body that the moderns invented to neutralize the danger of “the many-headed multitude “. According to this message, a divisible power is monstrous in that it leads by definition to war and anarchy. “No one can obey two masters”, this giant body has said for centuries, not only to women but also to “men of color”, to immigrants, to foreigners, to nomads, to all those who claim to participate in what is common, to the public thing.
Encounter in solidarity with palestinian political prisoners
With Assia Zaino (Paris 8 University)
The topicality of the question of political prisoners has brought up that of the possibilities and resources of resistance to all forms of confinement and impasse linked to the conditions of politics.
The initiative of this meeting is inspired by and one of the consequences of a meeting with Assia Zaino’s research on Israeli prisons, with the presentation of the book “Des hommes et des femmes entre les murs, Comment la prison façonne la vie des palestiniens” (Agone 2016), by Sarah Caunes on the struggles and mobilizations of prisoners locked up inside Turkish prisons, and by Valentin Schaepelynck on the history of institutional analysis. it reflects on the collective initiatives of solidarity with political prisoners in Turkey since the coup d’état of July 19, 2016, which continued with a mass repression, and the referendum of April 16, 2017, conferring all executive powers on the turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It reflects on the situations of friends imprisoned in Iran, past or still living in one of the many camps inside or outside Fortress Europe, or in the Middle East. It is an expression of our solidarity with the inhabitants of Nabi Saleh.
Contact : infopolitical-studies.net