As part of a Joint Session in Feminist Theory. This series of events takes place as part of the seminar »Theory and Figurations of Gender Relations« (Freie Universität Berlin) and the doctoral program in Gender, Culture and Society
(University of Helsinki). It is a cooperation between Esther von der Osten (Peter Szondi
Institute of Comparative Literature, Freie Universität Berlin), Susanne Lettow (Margherita von
Brentano Center for Gender Studies, Freie Universität Berlin) and Tuija Pulkkinen
(Department of Cultures, Director doctoral program Gender, Culture and Society (SKY),
University of Helsinki).

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Françoise Vergès (Paris): A Feminist Theory of Violence

In her talk, Franҫoise Vergès will develop a critique of the current police-judicial system and explore what could be a politics of protection that does not rely on the state, and thus on the police, the army, the court. Instead of protecting people from harm and violence, societies reproduce violent patterns, in particular with regard to certain segments of the population. Franҫoise Vergès proposes a critique of a certain universalist and carceral feminism and shows to what extent it is complicit in the perpetuation of patriarchal violence. She analyses the institutional structures that produce violence and constantly re-establish boundaries between those who have the right to be protected and those who do not have this right. It is therefore necessary to develop an autonomous politics of protection.

Françoise Vergès is is a political scientist and an anti-racist feminist and the president of the association »Décoloniser les arts«. She was a member of the Center for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University College of London (2000-207), head of the scientific and cultural team for a museum in Reunion Island (a »museum without objects«), Chair Global South(s) at Collège d’études mondiales, Paris and the chair of the French National Committee for the Memory and History of Slavery (2008-2012). She is interested in south-south artistic, cultural and political circulations, and currently in the neoliberal economy of predation and extractivism. She contributed to conversations on the decolonization of public space, reparation and museums, and is author of thirteen books, including Monsters and Revolutionaries, Colonial Family Romance and »Metissage« (1999). Une théorie féministe de la violence (2020), Resolutely Black. Conversations with Aimé Césaire (2020, french 2005), Un féminisme décolonial (2019, german translation 2021), The wombs of women. Race, capitalism, feminism (2020, french 2017), Ruptures postcoloniales. Avec Nicolas Bancel, Florence Bernault, Pascal Blanchard, Ahmed Boubakeur et Achille Mbembe (2010).

Join via: https://zoom.us/j/94853621819?pwd=VUt0UkxzVUd4NHk2TzdzdlljSlpXdz09
Meeting-ID: 948 5362 1819
Kenncode: 1RBtCY