The Future of Feminist Critique

Conference Description

This conference brings together innovative scholars and activists from a range of fields and political contexts. Together we will examine how specifically feminist analyses can speak to fundamental questions about the nature of subjectivity, the ethical claims of difference, the meaning of social justice, and the efficacy of political action.

• Who speaks for feminism in the public sphere and on whose authority?
• Under what conditions and in what language can feminists, in full awareness of our differences, either work together or make legitimate ethical claims about the general condition and treatment of women?
• How, in the wake of decades of theoretical questioning, can we understand human selves as both products of discursive and social structures and as ethically accountable agents?

The conference will consist of four sequential panels, each with three speakers and a moderator; a keynote address, to be given on Friday, November 3rd by activist and scholar Angela Davis; and several general discussions. Our aim throughout is to provide a forum conducive to sustained, open conversation, offering an opportunity to move beyond conventional ways of imagining feminism and debates within feminism towards new categories of analysis, new ways of relating theory to activism, and even a (or many) new politics.