Institut für Philosophie

The article conceptually investigates a type of gender murder, “romantic femicide.” I understand this as the extreme form of violence that occurs as result of men’ incapacity to cope with their (female) partners' autonomy and power. The incapacity is not merely an individual pathology but is rather rooted in the dynamic of recognition characterizing love under structural conditions of gender dichotomy. After having sketched out the current discussion about femicide and its shortcomings, I argue for the hypothesis in three steps. First, I draw on a feminist theory of recognition in order to outline a non-violent form of love. Lovers of this sort would depend on their partner and, at the same time, try to affirm their independence of them. Second, I show how such an interdependence bond would entail a dynamic of mutual empowerment. Third, I argue that love becomes a relation of domination as result of gender dichotomy. The dichotomization of two gender identities, “man” and “woman”, splits the interdependence bond in a way that allows only man's unilateral exercise of power and makes mutual empowerment impossible. Violence might be required for maintaining the dynamic of dominance; finally, romantic femicide may result from the unsustainability of such structure.

Cinema e filosofia 1 'acquoso flirt di sguardi, ambientato in una metropolitana, tra il protagonista Brandon (Michael Fassbender) e una bella signora, capelli rossi e anello di fidanzamento al dito, segna la fine del secondo lungometraggio del regista inglese. Una fine che, chiudendo un cerchio asfissiante come l'aria in quel vagone della metro, ci riporta al punto di partenza: dopo tutto ciò che è successo nel film -non molto in realtà, storie di ordinaria follia newyorkese, qualche torbida avventura sessuale, una rissa, il tentato omicidio della sorella Sissy (la sensualissima Carey Mulligan) -Brandon non si è spostato di un millimetro. Niente ci fa

In this rich and manifold collection, Sally Haslanger has gathered seventeen groundbreaking essays in which the conceptual resources of analytic metaphysics, social ontology and philosophy of language are put into play in order to deal with issues of gender and race. The common denominator of the papers is the attempt to outline a general framework of "social critique." The overall aim relies on the idea that philosophy has a potential for "unmasking ideology, not simply articulating it," (379) but also for constructing alternative ontologies that enable us to come "to more adequate and just visions of what is, what might be and what should be." In pursuing such a critical, or "debunking" project, Haslanger's main strategy consists in putting forth an account of social constructionism about gender and race that claims not to be antirealist, antiobjectivist or antinaturalist. This is precisely what the double-barreled title, Resisting Reality, intends to suggest. On the one hand, in contrast to antirealist approaches, Haslanger maintains that the social categories of race and gender are real. She intends thus to challenge the "common resistance to recognize the reality of the social world," (29) to recognize, that is, how categories like race and gender do de facto materially organize and influence our practices, interactions and institutions. On the other hand, Haslanger sees contemporary realities as the product of unjust social structures and asymmetries of power, which have therefore to be resisted (and possibly transformed): "We should not resist seeing the reality that we should, in fact, resist; in fact, disclosing that reality is a crucial precondition for successful resistance." (30)

This essay aims at exploring the intersections of two key-concepts of the Hegelian Critical Theory tradition, namely the categories of freedom and alienation. The concept of freedom at stake here relies on the idea of social freedom, according to which individuals can realize themselves within institutional life forms when they find themselves "at home" in being-with-others. To begin with, alienation can be defined as the social condition that prevents such self-realization. In the first two parts of the article, I analyze the criteria for the diagnosis of alienation, first, from a subjective and, second, from an objective perspective; that is, the analysis departs both from the point of view of the alienated subject and from that of an alienating ("inhabitable") form of life. In the third part, I try to show how social freedom and alienation are dialectical interwoven: while freedom requires alienation in order to be realized, alienation does imply a moment of freedom.

L’articolo è dedicato alla diagnosi di un modo del riconoscimento che sembra allacciarsi strettamente alle dinamiche del «dominio di genere», qui studiato nel contesto dell’amore, sia parentale che romantico. Facendo interagire alcune intuizioni di stampo sia sociologico (Eva Illouz) che psicanalitico (Jessica Benjamin) con le riflessioni honnethiane ispirate alla teoria delle relazioni oggettuali di Donald Winnicott, viene proposta una definizione della relazione riconoscitiva a partire dalla circolarità e coappartenenza tra il momento della dipendenza e il momento dell’indipendenza dall’altro/a. Se il circolo virtuoso tra questi due momenti si blocca, polarizzandoli secondo la dicotomia di genere tradizionale (classe e/o identità maschile vs. classe e/o identità femminile), la relazione riconoscitiva si fa rapporto di dominio. Questo tipo di relazione patologica viene però distinta dal rapporto di potere, che è invece parte integrante della dinamica riconoscitiva, spesso con esiti normativamente positivi: la dipendenza dall’altro/a, necessaria affinché il riconoscimento funzioni, implica dei vincoli che spesso si dimostrano costrittivi e limitanti; allo stesso tempo, il potere viene esercitato anche nel momento della lotta per affermare la propria indipendenza all’interno della relazione, trasformandola e facendola progredire.

The article aims at reconstructing the threefold account of power that Habermas presents in Between Facts and Norms (1992) for the purposes of a critical theory of democracy. In this work, Habermas distinguishes three modes of power: communicative power, administrative power, and social power. I suggest to consider a “healthy” democratic order as relying on the interplay and mutual interrelation between these modes of power. Such an interplay, or interdependency between the three modes of power is interpreted as immanent normative framework for diagnosing problems and dysfunctions, that is to say, pathologies of real-existing democratic orders. Although Habermas does not elaborate this argument, my hypothesis is that pathologies occur as one mode of power detaches itself, namely becomes independent from the others. This leaves us with three pathologies: "pathology of inequality", "bureaucratic or technocratic pathology", and "pathology of public impotence."

The article aims at giving a critical account of gender domination by drawing on the concepts of recognition as presented in the work of Axel Honneth and Jessica Benjamin. I consider this form of domination as a pathology of love, which concerns especially the heterosexual sentimental bond. The argumentation proceeds in three steps: First, I reconstruct, in the wake of Honneth, the type of social normativity regulating relations of loving recognition, which I call normativity of interdependence. According to this, love partners are both dependent on the other and independent from them. Second, I argue by relying on Benjamin that the interdependence bond is to be understood as implying mutual exercises of power. I suggest power should be conceived of as a positive feature in the transformative process of recognition qua love. Third, I frame the pathology of loving recognition as disruption of the interdependence relationship, due to the emergence of a sharp opposition between identities of “man” and “woman” – namely between an identity privileging independence and an identity privileging dependence as their peculiar constitutive features. Gender domination consists then in the unilateral exercise of power that blocks the transformative force of love.

Fa parte della morale non essere mai a casa propria." (Th. W. Adorno) L'ultimo lavoro di Bernardo Bertolucci, Io e te (2012), è un autentico Bertolucci: meno opulento forse di precedenti fatiche, ma l'impudenza della macchina da presa che spia dal "buco della porta dei tuoi genitori" (come dice Matthew, in The Dreamers) per penetrare una scabrosa sur-(o sub-)realtà, più veritiera della realtà stessa, rivela inconfondibilmente la firma del regista emiliano.

Conflicts between work and family life are front-page news. The conference is born out of the belief that the framing of these conflicts in mainstream culture - as a matter of personal choice or flexibility of employers to the needs of working parents - obscures the larger, structural conflicts inherent in the current phase of capitalism. This conference aims to illuminate these larger conflicts by looking at the norms that regulate the social spheres of work, family and intimate life, and how they function on the basis of long-standing inequalities and reified identities of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender and class. We anticipate a discussion about the meanings and normative underpinnings of feminism as a politics of emancipation in the context of present-day capitalism, with special attention to the transformation and reorganization of (re)productive work, care-work and the idea of “love.”

Speakers: Evelyn Nakano Glenn (Berkeley), Daniela Grunow (Frankfurt), Lisa Y. Haller (Kassel/Berlin), Maria Kontos (Frankfurt), Jennifer Nedelsky (Toronto), Beate Rössler (Amsterdam).

Organizers: Federica Gregoratto (Frankfurt a.M., Mara Marin (Frankfurt a.M.)

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Campus Westend
Max-Horkheimer-Str. 2
Gebäude "Normative Ordnungen"

In this paper, I address a highly controversial question in feminist philosophy, namely the so-called sex/gender distinction, from a Deweyan perspective. I argue that Dewey’s naturalism provides useful insights for dealing with and solving the problems concerning “sex” and “gender.”
My argumentation unfolds in three steps. I begin by highlighting the meanings of these two categories and the reasons that justify their differentiation. After having reconstructed the problems inherent in the distinction between “sex” and “gender,” I reconstruct, by discussing mainly Judith Butler's early work, the dilemma that emerges in the attempt to get rid of such distinction (1). Second, I draw on Dewey’s naturalism, especially as he frames it in Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Experience and Nature (1925) and in the short essay “The Inclusive Philosophical Idea” (1928), with the aim of outlining a way out of the dilemma. The idea is to cast the question of sex/gender in a way that allows to conceive of ourselves as simultaneously natural and socially constructed (Fausto-Sterling), as “simultaneously material-cultural” (Tuana) (2.) Third, as a conclusion, I touch on the hypothesis that Dewey’s naturalism may be useful for outlining a metaphysic of gender that counts as critical theory of gender. Such metaphysic would envision “gender” (social nature) as a double-faced figure, namely as both the result of a problem-solving, emancipating experimental/experiencing process and the crystallization of ideological and material power structures. On the other hand, the Deweyan approach would see the “critical energy” to challenge and change given gender structures and practices as held in the rich, various, mutable, transgressive natural dimension of our bodies, desires and impulses (3).