Guest Lecture: Vitalism, Ontology, Posthumanism. Three Problems of Contemporary Feminist Theory - Susanne Lettow (Gender Studies, Helsinki 11.3.2014)
Susanne Lettow, Professor of Gender and Natural Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland and Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Paderborn, Germany
Title of presentation: "Vitalism, Ontology, Posthumanism. Three Problems of Contemporary Feminist Theory"
Time: 11.3.2014, 14.00-16.00
Place: P673, Porthania (Yliopistonkatu 3, University of Helsinki)
Vitalism, Ontology, Posthumanism. Three Problems of Contemporary Feminist Theory
During the last years, constructivism that has informed feminist theorizing since the early 1990s has been increasingly scrutinized. Many theorists claim that the constructivist understanding according to which gender, the body and the world we live in are discursively constructed dismisses the materiality of our existence and its entanglement with non-human beings. In my talk I argue that it is indeed an urgent task for feminist theory to rethink theoretical approaches to matter, body, and biology, and to develop a new theoretical language beyond naturalism and anti-naturalism. However, I am critical about some current theoretical developments by which these challenges are met, in particular the recent turns to vitalism, to ontology and to posthumanism. By discussing these problems I will figure out a elements of a praxeological approach to socionatural relations that avoids a flight from contingency and social and political realities.
Susanne Lettow is currently Visiting Professor for Gender Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. She has holds a PhD in philosophy from the Free University Berlin and has held research and teaching positions in Austria and Germany at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, the Free University of Berlin and the University of Vienna. She is also a board member of the International Association of Women Philosophers. Among her publications are: The Power of Care. The Philosophical Articulation of Gender Relations in Heidegger's Being and Time (in German, Tübingen: edition discord 2001); Biophilosophies. Science, Technology and Gender in Contemporary Philosophical Discourse (in German, Frankfurt/Main and New York: Campus 2011), and the edited volume Reproduction, race and gender in philosophy and the early life sciences, Albany: SUNY Press 2014)
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