The Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies organises the DOING GENDER Lecture Series in cooperation with her partners. These lectures stress the importance of doing gender work combined with an active involvement in the practice of gender theory and research. The concept of DOING GENDER supports a hands-on approach to gender issues in the sense of social and political engagement with the new forms of gender inequalities that are taking shape in the world today. The lecture series wants to give space to the new generations of gender theorists and practitioners and to perspectives that innovate the field and do gender in new ways. Key is the notion of doing gender: what is the state of the art definition of gender? How do contemporary scholars and activists utilise this definition?
On Wednesday May 7, 2025, Dr. Andreja Novakovic (University of California, Berkeley, USA) will give the Doing Gender Lecture entitled On the Endless Repetition of Housework in Beauvoir, Federici, and Akerman.
This special edition of the Doing Gender Lecture is co-organized with the Platform Gender, Diversity & Global Justice (Institutions for Open Societies, UU), and deviates from the 2024-2025 Doing Gender Lecture Series theme.
Lecture: On the Endless Repetition of Housework in Beauvoir, Federici, and Akerman
Simone de Beauvoir famously describes housework as a kind of torment: day after day, you have to wash dishes, dust furniture, etc. She concludes that because housework is endlessly repetitive, it cannot provide a person with a reason for living. I compare her account of housework with two conceptions of housework that presented it in a more positive light. The first is Silvia Federici’s in her manifesto “Wages against Housework”, which argues that housework has a social value in virtue of which it deserves to be waged. The second is Chantal Akerman’s in her film “Jeanne Dielman”, which depicts housework lovingly as demanding and satisfying. Although Federici and Akerman shared some of Beauvoir’s ambivalence toward housework as a way of life, their aim was to make housework visible and to show its neglected significance.
Biography:
Andreja Novakovic is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Berkeley, where she is affiliated with the Program in Critical Theory. Her research interests are in 19th and 20th century European philosophy. She is also interested in film. She is the author of Hegel on Second Nature in Ethical Life and has two forthcoming books: Hegel on the Family Form with Cambridge University Press and Chantal Akerman: Filmmaker and Philosophy with Bloomsbury Press.
Doing Gender Lecture by Dr. Andreja Novakovic
Wednesday May 7, 2025
Lecture: On the Endless Repetition of Housework in Beauvoir, Federici, and Akerman
Time: 17:15 – 18:45 hrs.
Location: Janskerkhof 2-3, Room 0.19, Utrecht University (this room is wheelchair accessible. Please contact NOG@uu.nl to make further arrangements.)
Chair: Dr. Jamila Mascat & Dr. Ana Miranda Mora
Respondent: Dr. Marija Cetinic (Assistant Professor of Literary and Cultural Analysis, UvA)
Registration: nog@uu.nl
Reading and Preparation:
C. Akerman (1975), Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. [FILM]
A. Novakovic (2025), Chantal Akerman, Bloomsbury. Chapter 2, “Work” pp. 67-11 [READING]
