Paper Title
Spectral Politics
Location
Room 220, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)
Keywords
Intersectionality, Transnational Feminism, Derrida, Haunting
Start Date
April 2016
End Date
April 2016
Abstract
My paper reflects on the limits of intersectionality. Intersectional analysis draws our attention to the working of race, gender, sexuality, age, nationality, disability and other aspects of identity, their inter-activity and complicity. What about bodies outside of identity? How do we analyze spaces of slippage, nothingness, excess, or other-worldliness? Mocking concrete categorizations, specters question our ability to limit borders and bodies in time and space. In my paper, I analyze the possibilities of working with spectral visitations to re-frame a feminist transnational ethos. In pursuit of this aim, I work with Jacques Derrida’s “Specters of Marx” (1994) and think about its implications for post 9/11 feminist transnational politics. Does attention to hauntings enable a shifting of frames in feminist politics rather than one circumscribed by an ontological fixity of being in one space and time? Derrida showcases how specters can be of democratic relevance in questioning the space and time of the present. Working through frames of living and dead, here or there, human and non-human, spectral politics enables reflections on intersectionality and its limits.
Spectral Politics
Room 220, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)
My paper reflects on the limits of intersectionality. Intersectional analysis draws our attention to the working of race, gender, sexuality, age, nationality, disability and other aspects of identity, their inter-activity and complicity. What about bodies outside of identity? How do we analyze spaces of slippage, nothingness, excess, or other-worldliness? Mocking concrete categorizations, specters question our ability to limit borders and bodies in time and space. In my paper, I analyze the possibilities of working with spectral visitations to re-frame a feminist transnational ethos. In pursuit of this aim, I work with Jacques Derrida’s “Specters of Marx” (1994) and think about its implications for post 9/11 feminist transnational politics. Does attention to hauntings enable a shifting of frames in feminist politics rather than one circumscribed by an ontological fixity of being in one space and time? Derrida showcases how specters can be of democratic relevance in questioning the space and time of the present. Working through frames of living and dead, here or there, human and non-human, spectral politics enables reflections on intersectionality and its limits.
