As various marginalised – human and non-human – bodies face endless struggles for survival in the heated rapidly liquifying world, the course invites to meaningfully interconnect theories of gender with feminist environmental humanities. The course chooses gender, body and water as its main conceptual companions and connects structural injustice towards feminised, genderqueer, racialised bodies with environmental injustice that leads to such phenomena as glaciers melting, water contamination, water wars, and droughts.
Theories of gender and hydrofeminism (Neimanis 2012; 2017) will be regarded as two complementary discourses and toolkits that are able to challenge the dominant Western metaphysics of binaries and to crystallise more just and liveable futurities. We will think of what various bodies of water can offer to feminism, its theories, and practices, and what feminism and its imaginaries of a body can give back to water. We will think how insights of gender studies and hydrofeminisms may productively infuse each other at the theoretical, conceptual, methodological, affective, and activist levels. Together, we will build up tentative propositions for these vast concerns inflamed by the climate crisis.
The course starts by examining how the notions of ‘gender’ and ‘water’ come together in classic feminist texts (e.g. L. Irigaray, T. T. Minh-ha, H. Cixous), proceeds to trans and non-binary narratives and theorisations of gender, interlinked with processes of racialisation, that meaningfully feature a notion of water (e.g. E. Hayward, E. Steinbock, V. Agard-Jones), and, finally, engages with transdisciplinary research that attends to both gender and environmental injustice (e.g. A. Neimanis, S. Alaimo, N. Tuana, adrienne maree brown, M. Gómez-Barris). We will start by asking how imaginaries of gender were or were not formed by bodies of water. Next, we will think of ways various bodies of water have been intervening to challenge binary notions of gender. Finally, we attend to ways non-binary genders queered by a figuration (Braidotti 2011) of water may become critical tools for nuanced reflection and intervention in environmental issues. The course engages with scholarly texts but actively engages with hydrofeminist art. The course will provide an opportunity for online meetings and discussions with the artists and curators who take both gender and water crisis seriously.
- Teacher: Anastasia Khodyreva