MEDUSA coordina el Simposio ‘Into a Trans-forming world: exploring genders and postgenders’

MEDUSA coordina el Simposio “Into a Trans-forming world: exploring genders and postgenders” asociado al SIEF Working Group on Body, Affects, Senses, and Emotions (BASE) en el SIEF2019 14th Congress que tendrá lugar en Santiago de Compostela entre 14-17 Abril de 2019.

Into a Trans-forming world: exploring genders and postgenders

Convenors

Begonya Enguix (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) email

Paco Abril (Universidad de Girona, UOC) email

Short abstract

We aim to explore the configurations of sex-gender categories through the exploration of ‘traditional’ models of gender and gender relations and through the exploration of ‘emergent’ models such as trans*, demisexual, pangender, agender, gender fluid, gender neutral, asexual, and so on.

Long abstract

Many sex-gender categories are now present in social life both as legal possibilities (legislation on gender neutrality in Germany and Australia, for instance) or as a possibility for experience and/or experimentation.

For instance, Facebook identifies up to 58 categories related to gender. Asexuals and bisexuals have ‘come out’ all over the world, trans (genders/sexuals) seem to be on the spotlight, and people are now self-labelling as demisexual, pangender, agender, gender fluid, gender neutral, etc. thus resisting traditional systems of classification but also creating new forms of human categorization of sex-gender experiences.

In this panel we would like to explore the configurations of sex-gender categories both through the exploration of ‘traditional’ models of gender and gender relations and through the exploration of ‘emergent’ models of gender and gender relations.

We particularly encourage works based on the embeddedness of genders and bodies (embodied genders) and welcome theoretical explorations on what posthumanism and other feminist epistemologies (such as new materialisms) can ‘do’ with and for gender studies and for our understanding of actual sex-gender configurations. Through moving from natural(ized) essences to a non-binary model of knowledge that focuses on relations, connections, systems and assemblages, we can learn and grisp many of the actual configurations that are difficult to frame and understand in more stable and traditional sex-gender models.