INTRODUCTION TO THE SEMINAR OF 2019

Although the seminar of 2019 met with some difficulties, it has been successful both at the level of ambience and at the level of work. I planned to hold this seminar at the university of Warwick as the one of 2018. But I waited a long time before receiving news from them and the proposal was not really good. After searching for a possibility in Paris – but too late! – I found rooms at the Goodenough College, a place where I stay when I sojourn in London and that I like. Institute Contemporary Art, another of my favorite places in London, gave to me/us a room to hold the seminar. These gratifying solutions relieved me of the previous worries. But other happened. Luara Karlson-Carp broke her arm a week before the seminar and could not travel from Australia. Adelphe Adambadji, who lives in Benin, did not obtain his visa in time and arrived the last day of the seminar. The problem concerning Luara has been solved through a skype thanks to the kind help of Rosalie Dubal from ICA, and she is also exceptionally invited to participate in the seminar of 2020 at the university of Cambridge. Adelphe also will participate in a further seminar after having worked a little more on his PhD.

In spite of all that, and a persistent rain, we were joyful, kind to one another,and working well. The group was very cosmopolite, intercultural and interdisciplinary. The participants came from Australis, Benin, China, England, Finland, Germany, Greece and Thailand. They belonged to various disciplines: philosophy, anthropology, right, social sciences, literature. Whatever the differences between them — or perhaps thanks to these differences? — the attention paid to one another was really sustained and the discussions respectful and productive.

The last day I gave a talk at ICA — ‘How to keep hoping for a future’ — with two participants in past seminars, Harry Bregazzi and Elspeth Mitchell, who also contributed with a paper to the volume Towards a New Human Being (Palgrave, 2019). The room was crowded and the discussion has been intense and interesting.

Luce Irigaray

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adelphe T. Adambadji (University of Cotonou, Benin)

The manner of behaving towards women is henceforth subjected to critics, and some authors show their disapproval regarding the way in which women are treated: the reduction of women to their physical aspect; the way according to which the media sexualize the body of women; the passivity always associated with feminine subjectivity etc. All that makes women trapped in images and roles a priori unfavorable and imposes on them stereotypes, notably with regard to desire, which alienate and paralyze their development. Read more…

Marina Chistodoulou (Alpen Adria Universität Klagenfurt & Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès)

My thesis is entitled ‘Life is a habit or better said an obsession, or rather an addiction’. This research falls into the fields of philosophy of sciences, ontology, metaphysics, psychoanalysis and psychiatry.What follows corresponds to a blended overview of my presentation during the seminar and my discussion with Luce Irigaray concerning this presentation. Read more…

Riya Dedkhat (University, Bangkok, Thailand)

As a lecturer in the Law School in Roi-Et, the poorest and driest province, 514 kilometers northeast of Bangkok, as well as a family mediator at the provincial court, I realize that I am in the critical situation of initiating and building a ‘sexuate’ civil system which has never been approached by any legal expert in this country. Read more…

Luara Karlason-Carp (The University of Melbourne, Australia)

My project seeks to read Luce Irigaray’s concept of phallocentrism as a diagnostics of extinction, and to trace the implications of this diagnosis for understanding the relationship between gender, climate change and technocapitalism. Phallocentrism diagnoses the elision of sexuate difference by describing not only women’s exclusion as a subject from the symbolic economy, but her inclusion within this economy qua absence (Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un). Read more…

Luo Lianlian (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, P. R. China)

In two books of poems Meadowlands (1996) and Averno (2006), American poet Louise Gluck (1943—) ingeniously takes up again themes of the classical mythology into a modern context, and she discerningly shows that relationship with the mother ending in the adolescence’ rite of passage remains vital in both the mythical stories and the modern lives. Revolving around the stories of Penelope and Telemachus, the adolescent’s identity crises in the two books are distilled into the characters’ acceptance of their mothers. Read more…

Tanja Lipiäinen (University of Eastern Finland)

In the recent years my main research interest has been the body. In my doctoral dissertation I explore how Russian bodies and an African-Brazilian practice relate to one another. I approach this topic using feminist ethnography as my methodology and theories of body from anthropology, phenomenology and new materialism/material feminism. Read more…

Gillian Nevin (Falmouth School of Art, University of Falmouth, UK)

I have worked as a birth doula beside women and their families during labour and birth for many years. My research is embedded in Irigaray’s writing and the sacred space of the woman-mother. Irigaray believes that we are always mothers just by being women and reminds us that we ‘bring many things into the world apart from children’ (Sexes et Genealogies, p. 18). Read more…

Chanathip Suwannanon (Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand)

There is presently two main ways of understanding the term ‘Kathoey’ – กะเทย or Transgender woman. Some Kathoey feel proud to refer to themselves with this Thai term which has a long-lasting history, whereas others find the word Kathoey offensive. This different comprehension of the term urged me to discover the origin of its discriminatory meaning and ambivalent definition. In The Ethics of Sexual Difference, Luce Irigaray provides a clarification of her way of thinking which has been developed through her own experiences while also criticizing the masculine manner of producing knowledge. Read more…