Keynote speakers
Key speakers and the provisional subject of their lecture:
Prof.dr. Sara Ahmed, Goldsmiths University of London Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness
The paper will revitalise the languages of raising consciousness and false consciousness, by exploring feminist consciousness as a re-orientation towards the causes of unhappiness. It will also think specifically about Black feminist consciousness and its relation to the history of happiness.
The paper will revitalise the languages of raising consciousness and false consciousness, by exploring feminist consciousness as a re-orientation towards the causes of unhappiness. It will also think specifically about Black feminist consciousness and its relation to the history of happiness.
Referents: Eva-Mikaela Kinnari, MA (Åbo Akademi) and Dr. Jami Weinstein (Utrecht University)
Prof.dr. Karen Barad, University of California at Santa Cruz
Referent: Dr. Iris van der Tuin (Utrecht University)
Prof.dr. Claire Colebrook, University of Edinburgh Sexuality and the Politics of Vitalism
There has recently been a shift in knowledge paradigms away from linguistic, intellectual and cognitive approaches to experience accompanied by turn to embodiment, affect, vitality and the dynamism of knowledge. Many of these vitalist appeals to corporeal and transhuman life, for all their claims to radicalism and posthumanism, harbour highly normative, masculinist, organicist and Western presuppositions regarding proper life. By examining the ways in which the crisis of our imagined future has enabled a return to life I will put forward the case for a counter-vitalism that is also anti-organicist.
There has recently been a shift in knowledge paradigms away from linguistic, intellectual and cognitive approaches to experience accompanied by turn to embodiment, affect, vitality and the dynamism of knowledge. Many of these vitalist appeals to corporeal and transhuman life, for all their claims to radicalism and posthumanism, harbour highly normative, masculinist, organicist and Western presuppositions regarding proper life. By examining the ways in which the crisis of our imagined future has enabled a return to life I will put forward the case for a counter-vitalism that is also anti-organicist.
Referent: Prof. dr. Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University)
Prof.dr. Anne McClintock, University of Wisconsin-Madison Paranoid Empire: Specters Beyond Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib
This talk explores the nature of the new US imperialism in relation to the gendered dynamics of torture at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and beyond. I am preoccupied by the persistent presence of photography in the scene of torture and why so many modern states scrupulously record their own atrocities. This talk engages the gendering of violence in the terrible intimacies of torture, asking why the presence of women and children at Abu Ghraib is still a state secret, how we account for the complicity of women in masculinized forms of militarization, and how we account for the gendered rituals of humiliation and aggrandizement in torture. In the process, I critique the pornography-made-them-do-it narrative, exploring photography as a form of forgetting and how spectacle becomes a form of camouflage.
Referent: Dr. Sandra Ponzanesi (Utrecht University)
Dr. Amade M’charek, Universiteit van Amsterdam In the last ten years or so, I have been studying scientific practices of genetic diversity. My main interest has been in routine technologies in which, and, through which race and sex-differences materialize. Next to practices of population genetics I have been studying forensic DNA practices. The latter will be the main topic of my keynote address. I will examine contexts of criminal assaults including the sexualized and racialized discourses that come with them, and the evolution of DNA profiling, to show how biological races and sexes are being reified in criminal investigation and European legislation.
Referent: Dr. Cecilia Asberg (Linkoping University)
Prof.dr. Griselda Pollock, University of Leeds The Virtuality of Feminist Poiesis: or why the aesthetic in, of and from the matrixial-feminine speaks to the anguish of contemporary conflicts haunted by unprocessed trauma.
Referents: Dr. Marina Gržinić (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna) and Dr. Marta Zarzycka (Utrecht University)
Prof.dr. Gloria Wekker, Utrecht UniversityA Dutch Picture Book: Moments in a Multi-Ethnic Society
In this lecture, I will highlight and analyze, along intersectional lines, recent and historically more distant moments in Dutch multi-ethnic society. Central in my understanding is that current social and symbolical formations cannot be understood without taking the Dutch colonial archive into account. I will use different genres, including poetry, to bring this content across.
In this lecture, I will highlight and analyze, along intersectional lines, recent and historically more distant moments in Dutch multi-ethnic society. Central in my understanding is that current social and symbolical formations cannot be understood without taking the Dutch colonial archive into account. I will use different genres, including poetry, to bring this content across.
Referents: Dr. Adriana Bebiano (Coimbra University) and Dr. Gail Lewis (The Open University, London)
The International Centre of Information and Archive for the Women Movement (IIAV) has been so kind to create a space in their library where all the publications of the key note speakers can be found before, during and after the conference. The books are available for inspection and copy facilities are present. This is, for example, of benefit for students who will write a paper on account of their participation in the encores.
