Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Zentrum für Transdisziplinäre Geschlechterstudien

Veranstaltet von

Zentrum für transdisziplinäre Geschlechterstudien

Kurzbeschreibung

Harming the Body: Interrogating the Concept of ‘Harmful Cultural Practices’
by Chia Longman

Harmful cultural practices are often referred to in policy and feminist activist circles as forms of ‘bodily violence or harm’, such as female genital cutting/mutilation, honour related violence, forced marriages, etc. I question whether the notion of HCP is a viable and useful category of comparative analysis and theorisation of gender discriminatory and violent practices across cultural contexts. Or should the term be discarded as epistemically violent due to its genealogy of being embedded in unequal global power relations and colonial and gendered conceptions of ‘tradition’ and the ‘Other’?

Immunological Practices of Toxicity in Chronic Environmental Intolerance
by Sofia Varino

Environmental intolerance is a much debated chronic immune condition in which the body responds to toxic chemicals in the environment with a variety of mild to severely debilitating symptoms. I examine the concept of toxicity as an immunological practice operating in a variety of Environmental Intolerance narratives according to which the body at risk must avoid, manage and process a multiplicity of toxic chemicals that appear to compromise its stability from the outside. I contest this model of a body separate from its surroundings by showing that toxicity is a necessary component of cellular metabolism, and proposing instead a participatory model of immunity where organic and inorganic matter interact in lively and unpredictable ways, thus producing corporeal variability and vulnerability.

Referent_innen

Chia Longman

Sofia Varino

Weitere Informationen

ZtG-Veranstaltungskategorie: Ringvorlesungen/Gastvorträge des ZtG