DAY 2
Thursday 23 May
9.30-12.00: Keynote lectures, respondents & discussion
Auditorium O, Rozier 44
Chair: Karen Celis (Free University of Brussels)
9.30-10.10: Lecture 3
Lisa Baraitser (Birkbeck, University of London, UK)
Lecture title: ‘Post-maternal’? Reproduction, gender, kinship
The term ‘post-maternal’ has recently emerged as a way to articulate the effects of neoliberalism on the public devaluing of caring labour, linked to the rise of a gender-neutral workforce and the privitisation and commodification of care that has become more confined than ever to the home (Stevens, 2011). This term, however, suggests a reinstatement of ‘maternalism’ – a deliberate valorization of the values associated with care and mothering that have traditionally been gendered in the feminine, that rely on a heterosexist matrix for their intelligibility, and underpin a gendered division of reproductive labour. Both psychoanalytic and Marxist feminist writers during the 1970’s struggled with the question of the particular form of care that reproduction entails, and this feminist archive has recently been extended to a discussion of ‘post-work’ (Weeks, 2011), in which various historical calls for the valuing of unpaid work as a viable form of labour have been reanimated in the name of a postwork society. In this talk I want to think about the relation between these two analytic categories – ‘post-maternal’ and ‘post-work’. Both categories require that we re-think some of the most trenchant issues in feminist thought – the sexual division of labour, the question of whether kinship is always reliant on a heterosexist imaginary, the ‘non-reproductive’ as a principle of psychic and social life, how and why we might consider a specifically maternal subjectivity, and the possibilities for a new feminist commons. We will discuss the earlier productive enmeshment between psychoanalysis and feminism in its attempts to respond to these questions, and the ways that queer theory and critical race theory have moved these discussions on.
10.20-10.40: Discussion
10.40-11.00: coffee break
Chair: Julie Carlier (UGent)
11.00-11.30: Lecture 4
Adriaan van Klinken (Leeds University)
Lecture title: Transforming Masculinities: Gender Equality or Male Responsibility? - A Focus on Religious Masculinity Politics in Africa
Both research and activism about masculinities often employ a conceptual frame of patriarchy and are concerned with issues of male dominance and supremacy. Inspired by feminist thought there is a widely shared vision of a global transformation of masculinities towards gender equality. An important question, however, is how this political vision relates to the analysis of local configurations and politics of masculinity. Drawing from my research in Christian churches in Zambia, in this lecture I will show how in contemporary African contexts religion operates to effect change in men and transform masculinities. My examples of religious masculinity politics are not concerned with gender equality as such but with male responsibility in concrete contexts of HIV/AIDS, violence against women and changing gender and family relations, and therefore they utilise patriarchal notions of masculinity. Problematising the conflation of analytical and political work in the field of masculinity studies, I will explore some of the critical questions posed by religious masculinity politics to progressive masculinities scholarship and activism.
11.30-11.40: Respondent Henk de Smaele (University of Antwerp)
11.40- 12.00: Discussion
12-13.30: lunch
13.30 – 17.00: 2 Parallel Master classes
Master class 3: Reproduction and Kinship
Room D0.19, Rozier 44
Moderator: Katrien De Graeve (UGent)
13:30-14:00: theme intro & lecture on readings: Katrien De Graeve & Lisa Baraitser
14.00-15.15: student presentations relating their research projects to the session theme and readings
15.15-15.30: coffee break
15.30-17.00: discussion and feedback on student presentations and assigned readings; Katrien De Graeve & Lisa Baraitser
Master class 4: Masculinities
Room D0.22, Rozier 44
Moderator: Julie Carlier
13:30-14:00: theme intro & lecture on readings: Julie Carlier & Adriaan van Klinken
14.00-15.15: student presentations relating their research projects to the session theme and readings
15.15-15.30: coffee break
15.30-17.00: discussion and feedback on student presentations and assigned readings; Julie Carlier & Adriaan van Klinken
17.00-17.30: Closure (aud. O)