Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Gender as a Category of Knowledge

Jens Borcherding

Dissertation project:

Trans*_heterotopias – About the Interventions of Biographical Texts from Trans*-Activists and their
Impact on Hegemonic Knowledges of Gender

 

Description of the Project
The PhD project starts with a discussion of central concepts such as knowledge, gender(s), and norm* (-alization, -ality and the establishing of norms), as well as heteronormativity and a two-gender system. In the first part, I analyze through discourse-analysis how social realities are described in biographical texts of trans*activists, especially in the tension between the sanctioning and the enabling of self-conceptions, since the recognition of identities depends on dominant categories of knowledge. In the second part I take a closer look at the interdependent relations and conceptualizations of gender, transsexuality, and hegemonic regimes of knowledge regarding possibilities of interventions. Finally, I show how gender acts and functions as a disciplining apparatus and how gender at the same time it can lead to change: in the texts there is a potential of changing knowledge as a system of think- and articulabilities as it strongly depends on acknowledging heterotopian social realities.
                                                 

Particulars

 

Studium der Skandinavistik und Gender Studies an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. 2009 – 2011 Stipendiat_in des Graduiertenkollegs »Geschlecht als
Wissenskategorie«. Seit 2009 Mitglied der Forschungsgruppe »Transgender Studies and Theories: Building up the field in a nordic context«. 2012 Teil des wissenschaftlichen Beirats der Ausstellung »Trans*_Homo – von lesbischen Trans*schwulen und anderen Normalitäten« im Schwulen Museum* in Berlin.
   

Selected Publications

 

Section III – Ethical Challenges and the Lures of Normativity. In: Queer Futures. Reconsiderung Ethics, Activism and the Political, hg. v. Elahe Haschemi Yekani, Eveline Kilian u. Beatrice Michaelis, Burlington/Farnham 2013. S. 145–147.

Über utopische Verhältnisse von trans*_homo und Begehren, oder: eins und eins, das macht zwei…? In: trans*_homo. differenzen, allianzen, widersprüche. differences, alliances, contradictions, hg. v. Justin Time u. Jannik Franzen, Berlin 2012. S. 99–103.

zus. m. Anthony Clair Wagner: Monster, Begehren und das Virale. In: trans*_homo. differenzen, allianzen, widersprüche. differences, alliances, contradictions, hg. v. Justin Time u. Jannik Franzen, Berlin 2012. S. 117–120.
   

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