Gender and the Problem of Representation
Dienstag, 18.03.2025
Gender has, in recent, years become a problematic category, increasingly the site of social discord, political struggle, legal contestation, and institutional uncertainty, in politics, everyday life, and social science. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler formulates the predicament of gender as a problem of “representation”: gender categories are identity categories that have the dual and intertwining tasks of representing groups of people politically, defending their rights and interests, and representing them “ontologically,” naming the characteristics that define them as particular kinds of human being. Problems mount when disagreements over the basic “ontological” contents of categories deepen and permeate political struggles over how, and to what extent, to use the categories to organize and administer everyday life, as happened with categories of religion in post-Reformation Europe. Liberalism was born in 17th century European wars of religion as a pragmatic attempt to resolve this problem: citizens can believe what they want to believe “ontologically” in the private sphere, but they must check those personal beliefs at the doors of public political space and discourse. This mode of distinguishing and separating private belief from public policy seems to be the only option available to liberal societies, increasingly riven by a proliferating, multiplicity of competing, irreconcilable “ideologies” associated with gender. Gender categories are, however, more difficult to agree to disagree about than are categories of the divine, as “man,” “woman,” “boy,” “girl” are categories that historically and practically permeate liberal societies and their this-worldly organization. This seminar reviews various attempts of scholars of gender and feminism, and some of their critics, to conceptualize theoretically, and mobilize politically, the problem of representing gender as it takes shape in contemporary liberal societies.
| Dozierende(r): | Dr. Graham Hill |
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| 18.03.2025: | 16:15 - 18:00 |
| Ort: | Seminarraum B 202 Institutsgebäude vonRoll Fabrikstrasse 8 |
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