Sexuate subjects: conference outline

Forthcoming:

SEXUATE SUBJECTS: POLITICS, POETICS AND ETHICS
UCL, London
Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th December 2010

This international interdisciplinary event will examine how political, poetic and ethical practice and thought engage with questions of sexuality and sexual difference on a global stage. At a time when women’s and minority group rights are still frequently under-represented and marginalised in mainstream global discussions of citizenship and democracy, culture, health and community life, Sexuate Subjects responds to French thinker, Luce Irigaray’s theory of ‘sexuate difference’ for enabling critically-aware global formations of self-identity and community, art, architectural and spatial practices, ecology, environmental care and sustainability, health and bio-medically assisted life.

In particular, Sexuate Subjects will focus on these different relationships as they are expressed in political, poetic and ethical practice and thought in disciplines including: architecture, art, literature, modern languages, philosophy, the political and social sciences. By examining these complex expressions of our physical and psychic lives through artefact, body, dialogue, image, installation and word, this event will provide a platform of diverse approaches which can help us build sexuate futures. Such approaches will contribute towards developing more nuanced understandings of the diversity of global cultures and their academic and public intersections. International experts from higher education, professional and public realms, as well as young researchers and practitioners, are invited to respond.

Key questions being discussed include:

Where are ‘global’ women in contemporary approaches to health matters?
How are political, poetic and ethical issues addressed in feminist/feminine architectural and spatial practice?
How can sexuate ecologies and environmental practices inform global sustainability?
How can art inform conflict resolution?
Why poetry matters in thought, ethical and political life.
How can sexuate difference inform the ethics of global education?
How can feminist bio-ethics inform approaches to women’s and body-rights, fertility and population health?

http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/events/conferences/conferences.htm