States of Feminism/Matters of State: Gender and the Politics of Exclusion / abstract

Sperando di fare cosa utile, di seguito pubblichiamo gli abstract degli interventi al convegno States of Feminism/Matters of State: Gender and the Politics of Exclusion. Cogliamo l'occasione per ringraziare ancora (ed anche salutare da lontano) le organizzatrici dell'incontro - Sara Farris, Avigail Moss, Kerstin Stakemeier e Rebecka Thor -, tutto lo "staff" della Jan van Eyck Academie e in particolare Anne Vangronsveld, le/i partecipanti per l'attenzione e gli stimoli suscitati dalle loro domande. Un grazie va anche a relatrici e relatori per i loro interventi - di cui gli abstract pubblicati qui non riescono a restituire tutta la ricchezza - e alle discussant - Chiara Bonfiglioli, Avigail Moss, Sara Farris, Rebecka Thor, Katja Diefenbach e Kerstin Stakemeier. ABSTRACT: Andrea Geyer : Comrades of Time (Zeitgenössinen, 2010. Multi-channel video installation, HD, color, sound). To be contemporary means to be "with time" rather then "in time." "contemporary" in German is "zeitgenössisch." As Genosse means comrade, to be contemporary, zeitgenössisch thus can be understood as being a comrade of time — as collaborating with time, helping time when it has problems, when it has difficulties. Boris Groys. A group of young women appear by themselves in distinct videos in the same study reminiscent of a 1920s Bauhaus office. Sitting at a desk designed by Marcel Breuer, they speak to themselves as if addressing a group of friends, or colleagues and at times a large mass. Their voices are oscillating between reflection and prophecy while they speak to the political situation that surrounds them. The political imaginary is a reoccurring theme and quest. All pronouncements are inspired by the words of actual people living in the vibrant and tumults time of 1920s Germany: Political leaders, Union Organizer, philosophers, workers, writers, musicians, theorists, architects, artists, cabaret singers, etc. Post revolution, many of them came out at this time in public speeches and private letters to each other, trying to think themselves through the potential of a new social order, a new political imaginary. Art played a significant role at the time as one of the tools that could give form to the new imaginary, the new political, the new social and private. With looming extremist forces slowly forming and reconstituting, the new forces of the young republic tried to mobilize people by appealing to the capacities of their minds, and their responsibility to a larger collective. Comrades of Time offers a space to revisit this time, through the voices of young women. Rethinking, reimagining and reconsidering. Rada Ivekovic: Women at stake in matters of state, nation and society. It is not only populist and nationalist politics in Europe and today that instrumentalise discourses about female emancipation and that relate the question to national identity. The language of the nation is a language of obstetrics, birth giving and reproduction and it has regularly been used by the states, more so since the Westphalian era (1647), which is also that of sovereignty. Sovereignty of the state on one end of the scale implies the agency of the subject and its autonomy, heading towards the concept of citizenship, at the other. They are founded on European concepts of Humanism and of Enlightenment, and they rely on the politics of representation (about whose limits we are aware today). But women were denied both ends (both state sovereignty and individual autonomy), and female citizenship has always been obstructed. We should particularly look at Modernity as the time when the destiny of women and other subordinately included groups (and not excluded) is decided. This is also where women’s possible political alliances and solidarity with other groups, at least in part, is rooted.In the construction of today’s Europe, the women’s condition is associated with several others that come in a package although their origin is not the same. Michaela Mélian: Frequency Hopping (Life as a Woman). Frequency Hopping is looking for a different register, a different code, a suitable language. The choice of language means: feminist historiography tells not only different history, but tells history differently. 1)Constructing dialectic images, in which past and present come together in one constellation, immediately shedding light on their relationship. 2) contrasting the visibility of images and the invisibility of codes and unsung songs. 3)moving between image and concept, accessibility and hermeticism, historical reference and encryption. 4) changing of media, media-switching. 5) not just a method, it also expresses an attitude: looking for time-holes, generating feedback and productive misunderstanding.6) exploring politics of memory. Vincenza Perilli: The sexism-racism system and the colonial legacy in Fortress Europe. Despite the significant differences that have characterized periods of time, trajectories and modalities of European colonial occupations – and despite the variety in the strategies of resistance that colonized nations organized and in the subsequent process of decolonization – it is possible to identify common traits in the way in which the colonial legacy, in Europe, forged what we could call the “sexism-racism system.” More specifically, in this paper I concentrate on the employment of racist and sexist rhetorics by many political organizations, both right wing but also left wing. These rhetorics aim to contain and/or to domesticate conflicts, to create consensus and, finally, to justify the progressive transformation of Europe in a new “Fortress” under the banner of “Security” and the struggle against “Barbarism.” Johannes Paul Raether: The Rose seller (Performing crosswise to the politics of national identity, family and state). The Rose seller, an advocate for the total reconstruction of Berlin; the "Standort-oracle;" and Transformella, a reproduction-technological. Futurist, are figures that operate in unlikely situations, turning various narratives of national identity, family and state against themselves. They are fragmented figures: colorful, scary, flaming and funny, blending reality with fiction, narrating the politics of exclusion as a fary tale or a selling proposition. They perform the rituals and institutions, bodies and borders of this society, rendering them deliberate and ridiculous. They all try to operate in the extremely charged field of art with, in, and against politics, walking a fine line so as to not aestheticize politics, but to extract from its violence and stupidity the poetic or humourous moments that make their unlikely existence go on affirming this world, turning against it, as if it was a perfect place. Neferti Xina Tadiar: The Remainders of Feminism and Nationalism: Lifetimes in Becoming Human. In this paper I discuss the current global political moment in terms of the complex, potentially antagonistic relations between what I call the war to be human and becoming human in a time of war. I focus on the legacies of an imperial capitalist order of humanity and its regime of disposable life in the contemporary context of the Philippines in order to consider the meaning and challenges of becoming human in our time. Looking at the expressions of nationalist struggle on the part of activists facing extrajudicial execution by paramilitary forces of the government and on the part of feminists confronting the dehumanizing conditions of overseas women domestic workers, I analyze the violence of globalization, neoliberal democratization, and human rights governmentality as the product of dominant processes of humanization. I argue that the global norms of these processes are predicated upon the utter devaluation of and relentless assault on the social reproduction of marginalized communities who are continuously pushed beyond the brink of human belonging. Feminist and nationalist projects that seek to emancipate women from dehumanizing conditions of life through appeals to the rule of law or through participation in an expanding market economy ironically continue to depend on this dominant politics of humanization. To view the remainders of these present-oriented movements, I propose the notion of lifetimes as a concept for reckoning with the diverse array of acts, capacities, associations, aspirations in practice, and sensibilities that people engage in and draw upon in the effort to make and remake social life in situations of life-threatening hardship, deprivation and precariousness. I reconsider the human question by attending to the recent work of Filipina artist and activist Kiri Dalena, whose documentary film work and art installations have focused on political atrocities, state repression, social movements, history, violence, and human loss. I focus particularly on Dalena’s recent exhibit, “The Present Disorder is the Order of the Future,” to think about the political potential of remaindered lifetimes of struggle.