Disturbing Differences -conference
May 18-19, 2007
University of Turku, Finland
Call for papers:
Disturbing Differences. Feminist Readings of Identity, Location and Power - conference
Centre for Women's Studies, University of Turku, Finland
May 18-19, 2007
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Professor Elizabeth Grosz, Rutgers University
Professor Sara Ahmed, Goldsmiths College
Dr Leena-Maija Rossi, University of Helsinki
Dr Susanna Paasonen, University of Jyväskylä
The concept of difference implicates plurality and multiplicity, and has been within feminist research regarded as providing a necessary antidote to unquestioning uses of unified terms. Difference has been seen as offering means to analyse complex sets of meanings linked to identity formations and oppressive systems. By challenging identity labels, it has been seen to transcend classifications, and therefore suggest alternative subject formations. Since the 1990s, however, the language of multiplicity and difference has been increasingly considered as imprecise, even reductive. As a consequence, especially the Nordic countries have seen a boom of discussions about "intersectionality". At this conference, we wish to take stock of the current theoretical and methodological debates this "new" concept has raised. Is the notion of intersectionality more than yet another term for acknowledging multiplicity? What are the qualitatively new questions that it enables and encourages?
In the wake of this feminist "intersectional turn", we invite reflections on the current challenges for feminist knowledge production that focuses explicitly on differences/intersections of subjectification and identities. The conference calls for discussions of identities as asymmetrical and permeated by power-relations, asking how to address simultaneous but distinct axes of subjectification, and to analyse them interactively. Within the overall framework of feminist knowledge production, we wish to address issues of positionality and location, investigating how intersectional knowledge production necessarily foregrounds certain identities while others are pushed into the background. In what ways may the intersectional perspective challenge hegemonic positions within feminist knowledge production, decentring normative knowing subjects?
We welcome papers that challenge fixed identity demarcations and, instead, focus on the in-between spaces of identity axes, on hybridity identities as well as on the movements, processes and trajectories of identity differentiation. The interaction of social categories being dependent on the fluctuations of sameness and difference, which occur in historically and culturally diverse contexts of power relations, we also want to reopen and rethink feminist discussions on the concept of sameness and the issue of ontology (e.g. new materialism).
Possible paper topics for 20-minute presentations might include but not be limited to the following:
- Production of knowledge across difference
- Intersectionality and historicity
- Intersectionality and interdisciplinarity
- Sameness within intersectionality
- Ontology and intersectional identities
- Feminist politics of reading
- From relativism to multiple interpretative practices
- Queer differences and queer readings
- Affectivity and emotional investments in feminist knowledge production
- Ethics and feminist knowledge
Abstracts of no more than 500 words in English should be sent to Conference Secretary Päivi Valotie - paivi.valotie(at)utu.fi - by January 31, 2007. Information about accepted papers will be announced by the end of February 2007. Participation is free of charge.
The conference is organised by:
- The research project: "Disturbing Differences. Feminist Readings of Identity, Location and Power", financed by the Academy of Finland and headed by Professor Marianne Liljeström at the Centre for Women's Studies, University of Turku
- The Doctoral School for Women's Studies in Finland
CFP can be downloaded also from the link below (word-rtf format)