Feminist Critical Analysis Seminar

Publications and research from Washington University in St. Louis Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies faculty associated with the Feminist Critical Analysis Seminars

Contemporary theoretical shifts toward affect emerged as a critique of post structuralism's failure to accommodate or even recognize those central facts about human experience that “cannot be translated into words without doing violence” (Anna Gibbs), such as: "a body's capacity to affect and to be affected" (Gregory Seigworth & Melissa Gregg). Following the line of this epistemological turn away from language, we invite different interpretations of affect and seek interdisciplinary approaches that examine connections between affect and feminist politics. We are interested in examining the relation between meaning and sense, representation and event, perception and experience, capital and objects of emotions, in order to try and answer the question about whether a focus on affect, not only as a force manifested on a personal level (as emotion), but as an impersonal intensity "of what the human shares with everything it is not" (Brian Massumi), can lead to reexamination of our views on feminist theory and politics. If feminism's "killjoy" capacity exposes "the bad feelings that get hidden, displaced, or negated under public signs of joy"(Sara Ahmed), what are the dangers of turning the politics of happiness into a politics of anger, as Ahmed suggests? What are the "affective objects" that feminism is directed to? If affect is a force created between different bodies, is there a need for a renewed embodiment of feminist politics?

We encourage active participation and debate that will bring together disciplines from across the humanities, social sciences, art, political theory, cultural studies, philosophy, etc. In 2014, the annual course Feminist Critical Analysis will examine these more recent theoretical moves and consider their consequences for feminist scholarship and activism.

The course will be held at the Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik (www.iuc.hr) from May 26th to May 30th (2014). The course is co-directed by Professor Dasa Duhacek, University of Belgrade, Professor Ethel Brooks, Rutgers University and Distinguished Professor Linda Nicholson, Washington University.

Sponsored by The Center for Gender and Politics of the Belgrade University - Faculty of Political Sciences / The Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey / The Program in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Washington University in St Louis