Project description
Gender-formation and bodily time through the lenses of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and performativity
The intersection between nature and culture is highly relevant to the ongoing discussions of gender and embodiment. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the NETRePerform project will set a new framework for the investigation of this intersection. It will leverage multiple themes and perspectives: embodied temporality and the relationship between time, body and motivation; the relevance of narrativity over naturalistic approaches; gender performativity, the concept that gender is not natural or biological but ‘performative. It will build on phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches in a discussion with narrative theory and speech act theory.
Objective
Discussions on the relation between gender-forming discursive practices and biological reality inevitably turn to the body where nature and culture intersect. Is the body a mere canvas for symbolic practices to inscribe divisions and exclusions or does biological reality dictate divisions and limitations to symbolic practices? Both symbolic practices and biology rely on a temporal dimension that shapes the discussion: Is a historical or a discursive time able to effectuate these radical inscriptions or does biological time generate these practices? Our project will address this issue by synthesizing multiple perspectives. First, we will sketch an innovative framework for addressing embodied temporality by tackling from a phenomenological perspective the complex relation between time, body, and motivation. Our programmatic emphasis on motivation's relation to embodiment will initiate a series of innovative shifts. We will proceed to the dimension of language at the level of narrative. Dismissing recent naturalistic approaches, we will instead revisit Ricoeurs work searching for a novel perspective that will allow us to reinstate the pertinence of narrativity. We will then address Butler's conception of gender-performativity by first carrying out an investigation of speech-acts and their temporal structure. Ricoeurs and Butlers respective critical accounts of speech-acts will serve as our guide. We will claim that non-discursive elements of speech-acts determine their temporal structure and we will thematize their bodily origin. Exploring the bodily involvement of motivation will form a novel framework that will allow our investigation of the embodied nature/culture intersection to move beyond the models of naturalization and performativity. We will be discussing with feminist and gender theorists who have variously thematized the problem of biological materiality.
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
1678 Nicosia
Cyprus