On 26 February, the Centre for Gender and Diversity in collaboration with Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies (NOG) is excited to host Prof. Clare Hemmings (London School of Economics) for the next Vectors for Change lecture: Feminist Knowledge Struggles: Telling Stories Differently

Prof. Hemmings will explore queer feminist methodologies to counter right-wing and anti-gender movements, drawing from histories of feminist thought and affective resistance. Don’t miss this insightful discussion!

Lecture: Feminist Knowledge Struggles: Telling Stories Differently

This lecture proposes translatable methodologies for a queer feminist project to intervene in the categorical and political certainties of the hostile present. What resources do we have in queer feminist work that will help us counter right-wing or anti-gender developments, resist the negative impact of these attacks, and strengthen community responses to aggression? I want to propose two tactics in this lecture – recitation, which is a methodology I initially offered in 2011 to challenge received histories of feminism and universalism, a much maligned epistemological position – as interventions to resist the certainties of ‘anti-gender’, homophobic, transphobic and racist aggression. With the first tactic, I want to ‘recite’ a feminist history of ‘sex’ to incorporate the fields’ materialist, radical and black or decolonial interrogations of it as a site of struggle. With the second, I revisit Sedgwick’s understanding of the ‘epistemology of the closet’ as a universal condition for knowledge claims, suggesting ways in which that impulse might be expanded productively to think about affective dissonance as a universal condition for solidarity politics in our grim times. With this lecture, I want to honour the radical thought we have, and the histories of pedagogy that have laid the ground for present resistance.

Biography:

Clare Hemmings is Professor of Feminist Theory. She has been working at the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics since 1999. She has two main areas of research focus – feminist and queer studies – and is particularly interested in thinking through the relationship between these, as well as the ways in which both fields have been institutionalized at national and international levels. Clare has published 3 books – Bisexual Spaces (2002); Why Stories Matter (2011) and Considering Emma Goldman (2018). In all her work she’s interested in form as well as content, and in interdisciplinary and creative methods. Clare has recently been gathering family stories for a project Inheritance: a Memory Archive. Combining fiction and memoir, the project foregrounds the moments in family dynamics that challenge what we think we know about gender roles, sexuality, race and citizenship. She has also been actively engaged in writing against ‘anti-gender’ mobilisations, often as part of the network ‘Transnational “Anti-Gender” Movements and Resistance” with Sumi Madhok.

Details Lecture:

Date & Time: February 26, 2025, 15:30-17:30h
Location: FASoS, Grote Gracht 76S Room 1.02, Maastricht
Contact Person: Vasiliki Belia (v.belia@maastrichtuniversity.nl)