Sexual politics and the limits of secular discourse

Résumé

Many arguments have been made recently that coercion and violence establish the limits of a certain 'culturalism'. Although culturalist arguments are cledarly spurious when they seek to minimize or to maximize the suffering of torture for certain polemical aims.
But we can still ask about the cultural specificity of certain forms of sexual torture without questioning their unacceptability.
Given the religious terms through which violence and counter-violence take place, must we assume a certain secularism in order to oppose sexual coercion of every kind?
Is it possible, if not necessary, to become critical of that kind of the secular presumption at the same time that we  formulate strong claims againt violence and coercion? How do we understand the relations among torture, sexual politics, and the clash of civilizations?

Bio/Bibliographie (from her website)

Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1984. She is the author of Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (Columbia University Press, 1987), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (Routledge, 1993), The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection (Stanford University Press, 1997), Excitable Speech (Routledge, 1997), Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (Columbia University Press, 2000), Hegemony, Contingency, Universality, with Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, (Verso Press, 2000). In 2004, she published a collection of writings on war's impact on language and thought entitled Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning with Verso Press. That same year, The Judith Butler Reader appeared, edited by Sara Salih, with Blackwell Publishers. A collection of her essays on gender and sexuality, Undoing Gender, appeared with Routledge in 2004 as well. Her most recent book, Giving an Account of Oneself, appeared with Fordham University Press (2005) and considers the partial opacity of the subject, and the relation between critique and ethical reflection. She is currently working on essays pertaining to Jewish Philosophy, focusing on pre-Zionist criticisms of state violence. She continues to write on cultural and literary theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminism, and sexual politics.

An excellent (and searchable) bibliography of her work is at the following address: http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/indiv/scctr/Wellek/butler/

Le Programme

19:00 accueil et enregistrement
19:15 introduction de Sarah Scheepers (Sophia) & David Paternotte (FNRS/ULB)
19:30 conférence Sexual politics and the limits of secular discourse de Judith Butler (University of California, Berkeley)
20:30 pause
20:45 débat avec le public, introduit et modéré par Inge Arteel (VUB) & David Berliner (ULB)
21:30 conclusions et fin

ATTENTION! La soirée se déroulera uniquement en anglais, il n’y aura pas de traduction.

Réservations : Il est indispensable de réserver. Pour ce faire, veuillez envoyer votre nom et prénom à Sara S'Jegers avant le 21 mai 2007 (10h) par email à sara@sophia.be, par téléphone au 02/ 229 38 69 ou par fax au 02/ 229 38 59. Votre réservation ne sera considérée comme valable que lorsque vous en aurez reçu confirmation par Sara. Nous tenons à préciser que le nombre de places est limité à 200.

Cette soirée est organisée avec le soutien du Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS).

Oratrice(s)/orateur(s) Judith Butler, Inge Arteel, David Berliner

Lieu et horaire : 19h - 21h30

Facultés Universitaires de Saint-Louis (FUSL), local 100 (1re étage)
Rue du Marais 109
1000 Bruxelles
(plan)

Prix €5 ou €3 (prix réduit pour les membres de Sophia, les étudiants et les chômeurs)

Contact: Sophia vzw/asbl
Middaglijnstraat / Rue du Méridien 10
1210 Brussel / Bruxelles
02 229 38 69
info@sophia.be
http://www.sophia.be