Organized by: Dr. Esther von der Osten, Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature, Freie Universität Berlin, PD Dr. Susanne Lettow, Margherita von Brentano Center for Gender Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Dr. Tuija Pulkkinen, Department of Cultures, Director doctoral program Gender, Culture and Society (SKY), University of Helsinki.

Input

Estelle Ferrarese (Amiens): 

I would like to try and philosophize on the subject of sobbing, based on the following elements: in a fit of sobbing, my body neutralizes everything that could, or even should, give me a form of mastery over the world: breath, speech, thought. It thus doubles the powerlessness that has just struck me.

It tears apart the seductive narrative that I am the author of my biography, the midwife of my potentialities, the organizer of my progressions. This series of phenomena forces me to face up to my powerlessness. I live it. And yet, in their violence, in their work of disfigurement and disorganization, these phenomena shatter the self-evident. I protest against my powerlessness in the very act of allowing myself to be overwhelmed by it.

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