Braidotti: Nomadic Feminist Theory In A Global Era

Braidotti: Nomadic Feminist Theory In A Global Era from bkm on Vimeo.

This lecture addresses the so-called ‘post-human’ turn in contemporary feminist theory in the light of three main considerations: firstly the shifting perception and understanding of ‘the human’ in the Life sciences; secondly the effects of globalization as a system that functions by instilling the process of ‘timeless time’ and perverse, multiple time-lines. Thirdly, the impact of wars and conflicts in contemporary governmentality and the new forms of discrimination they engender on a planetary scale. Last but not least this talk examines the implications of this historical context for progressive, affirmative politics in general and gender issues in particular.

Rosi Braidotti, who holds Italian and Australian citizenship, was born in Italy and grew up in Australia, where she received a First-Class Honours degree from the Australian National University in Canberra in 1977 and was awarded the University Medal in Philosophy and the University Tillyard prize. Braidotti then moved on to do her doctoral work at the Sorbonne, where she received her degree in philosophy in 1981. She has taught at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands since 1988, when she was appointed as the founding professor in women’s studies. In 1995 she became the founding Director of the Netherlands research school of Women’s Studies, a position she held till 2005. Braidotti is a pioneer in European Women’s Studies: she founded the inter-university SOCRATES network NOISE and the Thematic Network for Women’s Studies ATHENA, which she directed till 2005. She was a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College in 2005-6; a Jean Monnet professor at the European University Institute in Florence in 2002-3 and a fellow in the school of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1994. Braidotti is currently Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University and founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities.