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Karin Hostettler / Sophie Voegele

Gender and Sexuality as Place/s of Imperial Thinking. Approximations from a (post)colonial theory’s perspective 

 

We suggest to divide such a (post-)colonial critique on gender issues into two strands. One strand research is located within Critical, Feminist and Postcolonial Theories.

discusses the impact of European gender-thinking in former colonial areas. There, for example, is the questioning of the adequacy of a dichotomous gender understanding as well as the division of sex and gender for investigating gender/sexual relations in a non-western society. The second strand asks for the impact of Colonialism for a European gender order by putting forward that the distinction of sex and gender is itself built upon racist assumptions separating the primitive, mere body from the cultural and social transformable gender. For our contribution we would like to take the second strand into focus. We argue that by applying a (post)colonial theory’s perspective to the European context, we are able to point out specific manifestations of gender and culture that resonate imperial thought – and actually are deeply embedded in imperial thinking. Furthermore, we make the assumption that gender as imperial thinking occupies multiple place/s. This also implies that in its manifestations of Western modern subjectivity, gender is not simply homogenizing but multidimensional in the sense that the process of becoming implies colonial power relations, differentiating visible from subaltern knowledge. Hence, colonial differences and power relations can be located not only in former colonized countries, but also in Europe. In regard to processes of Othering, this implies differentiations within Europe enforcing the aspired self by producing European Others.

On the basis of selected contributions to a forthcoming anthology on the aforementioned topic we are editing, we would like to consider and critically discuss different ways in which gender and sex are places of imperial thinking. Thereby, we will touch more in detail on aspects of feminist orientalism (Dietze). Our aim for such a critical investigation is to allow a glimpse on how possibly places of powerful thinking – in this case imperial thinking – can be critiqued and transgressed. Thus, we approach Europe as a site of multiple places that have to be de-imperialized in order to be de-centred and de-colonized. We hope that such considerations might set the grounds for conceptualizing places allowing thinking transnational solidarity.

 

 

Karin Hostettler, (lic.phil.) is a PhD candidate at the University of Basel. The title of her dissertation is “Denk(t)raum Mensch. Kant, Kritik und Othering”. Her research is located at the intersection of Philosophy, Gender Studies and Postcolonial Theories. She taught at the Centre for Gender Studies, University of Basel and currently holds a research associate position at the University of St. Gallen.

 

Sophie Voegele, (lic.phil.) is a PhD candidate at York University, Toronto. The working title of her dissertation is “Theorizing Politics of Difference and Othering”. She has fieldwork experience in India and taught at the Centre for Gender Studies, University of Basel and at the department of Sociology, York University. Currently she holds a position at the University of Applied Sciences Bern. Her  research is located within Critical, Feminist and Postcolonial Theories.

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