Feminist Theory - Gender Theory:
Subject, Embodiment, Agency
June 20-22, 2006
Deadline for application:
May 1, 2006
University of Bergen, Norway
Professor Elizabeth Grosz, Rutgers University
Professor Ellen Mortensen, University of Bergen
Lecturer Johanna Oksala, Helsinki University
Post. doc. Cathrine Egeland, University of Bergen
Professor Ellen Mortensen - in collaboration with Research School leader Prof. Nina Lykke
Simone de Beauvoir claimed that the body is a situation. In contemporary feminist theory and gender theory, the intersections of subjectivity and embodiment are explored in different ways. Furthermore, conflicting theories of gender constructs circulate in an ever-changing field of inquiry. How do we differentiate between these different theoretical approaches and the concepts that belong to them? What is the difference between subjectivity and agency? How do current poststructuralist theories of carnality relate to other theories of the body? Does it make sense to conceptualize subjectivity after the “death” of the subject? Can bodies be more than the totality of their organs? Are power and freedom linked in the new technologies of the self? What is the relation between subjection and subjectivity? In which ways does the body speak in the new maladies of the soul? Can subjectivity be located in sexual, corporeal materiality, beyond the frameworks of essentialism and biologism?
The course will both give an introduction to and elaborate further on
contemporary feminist and gender theories on embodiment and subjectivity. The course will include:
1) lecture-discussion-sessions, and
2) group sessions (with presentations of students' papers, where students will be given the opportunity to present their doctoral research and receive comments from teachers and co-participants).
The course will take place at Dragefjellet skole, Seminarrom 1, 4. Etg., University of Bergen (Group rooms will be assigned when you arrive)
9.30-10: Students and teachers introduce themselves
10-12: Lecture #1 (Mortensen)
12-13: Questions and answers
14-17: Work-shops (Break included)
18-20: Reception at SKOK, Allégt. 34 (Refreshments)
09-11: Lecture #2 (Grosz)
11-12: Questions and answers
13-15: Lecture # 3 (Oksala)
15-16: Questions and answers
16-19: Work-shops (Break included)
09-11: Lecture #4 (Egeland)
11-12: Questions and answers
15-16: Evaluation of course
Literature – Professor Elizabeth Grosz, Rutgers University:
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix (1988): “November 28, 1947: How to Make Yourself a Body Without Organs” in A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia pp. 149-166.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix (1988): “1730: Becoming Intense, Becoming Animal, Becoming Imperceptible...” in A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia pp. 232-309.
Flieger, Jerry Aline (2000): “Becoming-Woman: Deleuze, Scheber and Molecular Identification” in Buchanan, Ian and Colebrook, Claire (eds.) Deleuze and Feminist Theory, Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 38-63.
Colebrook, Claire (2000): “Is Sexual Difference a Problem?” in Buchanan, Ian and Colebrook, Claire (eds.) Deleuze and Feminist Theory, Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press pp. 110-127.
Grosz, Elizabeth (2005): “The Force of Sexual Difference” in Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, Duke U.P. pp 170-183.
Braidotti, Rosi (1994): “Discontinuous Becomings: Deleuze on the Becoming-Woman of Philosophy” in Nomadic subjects: embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 111-135.
Braidotti, Rosi (2001): “Zigzagging Through Deleuze and Feminism” in Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Blackwell Publishers, US, pp. 65-116.
Literature – Lecturer Johanna Oksala, Helsinki University:
Foucault, Michel (1998): The History of Sexuality, Penguin vol. I. (160 pages)
Butler, Judith (1990/1999): Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity, New York: Routledge, pp. 3-44 and 119-141.
Oksala, Johanna (2005): Foucault on Freedom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 110-134.
Literature – Professor Ellen Mortensen, University of Bergen:
Irigaray, Luce (1985): ”Any Theory of the ’Subject’ Has Always Been Appropriated by the ’Masculine’” in Speculum. Of the Other Woman. Trans. by Gilllian C. Gill. Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 133-146.
Irigaray, Luce (1991): ”Sexual Difference” in M. Whitford (ed.) The Irigaray Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 165-177.
Irigaray, Luce (1991): ”Veiled Lips” in Marine Lover. Of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Gillian C. Gill, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 77-119.
Deleuze, Gillles (2001): ”Nietzsche” in Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life, New York: Zone Books, pp. 53-100.
Mortensen, Ellen (1993): ”Irigaray and Nietzsche: Echo and Narcissus Revisited?” in K. Ansell-Pearson & H. Caygill (eds.) The Fate of the New Nietzsche, Aldershot,UK: Avebury/Ashgate Publishing, pp. 229-250.
Butler, Judith (1997): ”On Linguistic Vulnerability” in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, New York: London: Routledge, pp. 1-41.
Kristeva, Julia (2002): ”The Intimate: From Sense to the Sensible (Logics, Jouissance, Style)” in Intimate Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis, trans. by j. Herman, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 43-62.
Literature – Post doc. Cathrine Egeland, University of Bergen:
Butler, Judith (2004): “Bodies and Power Revisited” in Taylor, Dianna and Karen Vintges (eds.) Feminism and the Final Foucault, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago. Pp. 183-194.
Butler, Judith (2004): “Introduction: Acting in Concert; Beside onself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy”, and “Gender Regulations” in Undoing Gender, Routledge, NY and Oxfordshire. Pp. 1-56 + pp. 251-253.
Haraway, Donna (1992): “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for in/appropriated Others” in Grossberg, Nelson and Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies, Routledge, NY and London. Pp. 295-338.
Haraway, Donna J. (1991): “A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminsm in the late twentieth century” in Simians, Cyborg and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. London, Free Association Books. Pp. 149-182 + pp. 243-248.
Haraway, Donna J. (1997):"Semantics: Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. Femaleman© Meets Oncomouse(tm)", and "Facts, witnesses and consequences" in Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. Femaleman© Meets Oncomouse(tm): Feminism and Technoscience. New York, Routledge, pp. 21-45, 267-273, 276-279.
Lauretis, Teresa de (1989): “The Technology of Gender” and “The Violence of Rhetoric: Considerations on Representation and Gender” in Technologies of Gender. Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction, Macmillan Press. Pp. 1-50.
(A reader will be send out to the participants in the beginning of May. However, the participants must buy or borrow Foucault, Michel (1998): The History of Sexuality, Penguin vol. I (160 pages).)
31 applicants, 23 participants and 1 guest participant: Estonia 1, Czech Republic 1, Finland 7 (1 self-paying), Finland/Poland 2, Iceland 1, Lithuania 1, Norway 3 (1 self-paying, 1 guest participant), Sweden 7 (1 self-paying), UK 1 (self-paying)
Last updated: 2011-01-20