SPRING 2015

WWW.WOMENSTUDIES.DUKE.EDU

- PAGE 4 - - PAGE 6 - - PAGE 8 - - PAGE 14 - Faculty Updates FTW 2014 Lecture Series The Haunted Catch up with Women’s Fascinating lectures are Scholars reflect on the Studies faculty members. Workshop participants part of this year’s theme, no-longer new South share their experiences. Psychoanalysis in an Africa at this two-day International Frame. interdisciplinary conference.

Psychoanalysis Lecture Series By Ranjana Khanna MARGARET TAYLOR SMITH The Year of Psychoanalysis in an International Frame DIRECTOR OF WOMEN’S STUDIES

ur theme of International Psychoanalysis has four pieces that follow go some way to exploring our theme this yielded some fantastic talks. The lectures have year (discussed more generally in the spring 2014 newsletter) explored the manner in which psychoanalysis was through some of the speakers who come to spend time with Oa syncretic internationalist form in its early years us. Far from irrelevant or outdated, psychoanalysis is shown as it developed around the world, and that today it remains a to be pertinent and essential for the study of the processes of form of clinical and cultural analysis that travels back and forth individuation from Buenos Aires to Bombay, and from Cairo to across continents raising questions concerning the relationship the Caribbean. between sexual difference and other forms of difference. The The four referenced articles begin on Page 8. WS Newsletter

WOMEN’S STUDIES Kinship FALL 2014 EVENTS

Trouble SEPTEMBER 19 The EQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE DEBATES Kinship Trouble - The Equality/Difference Debates: NC, USA, France, Europe, daylong workshop By Annabel L. Kim hosted by the Program in Women’s Studies and POSDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, the Center for French & Francophone Studies PROGRAM IN LITERATURE, “Kinship Trouble: The Equality and Difference Debates,” was organized by Ranjana Khanna (Women’s Studies), Helen SEPTEMBER 29 Solterer (Romance Studies), and Anne Garréta (Literature), as Ankhi Mukherjee (University of Oxford), “Unseen a response to the debates in the United States and in France City: Traveling Psychoanalysis and the Urban Poor,” over issues of same-sex marriage. Five invited speakers Psychoanalysis in an International Frame series reflected on same-sex marriage and its consequences for our current models of kinship and society. Over the course of the workshop, the subject was debated from the various vantage SEPTEMBER 29 points of, among others, legal practice, legal theory, sociology, Graduate Scholars Colloquium: “Psychoanalysis political science, philosophy, , and queer theory. in an International Frame,” 2014-15 WST Post- The liveliness of the conversation and the interventions of the Doctoral Associates round table with and Carolina audience made it clear that regardless of who one was and Diaz, Anna Fishzon, and Ross Truscott what sort of background one had, same-sex marriage and the questions that it poses was a subject of consequence for all. OCTOBER 20 Patricia Gherovici (Apres-Coup Psychoanalytic The first part of the workshop featured the two legal experts Association, NY), “Beautiful Difference: From on the panel: Maxine Eichner (UNC Chapel Hill), and Milan Hysteria in the Barrio to Transgender Plasticity,” Pham, a local Durham lawyer at the law firm Nicholson Psychoanalysis in an International Frame series Pham. The second part of the workshop focused on identity (de)formation and subjectivity, with Michael Warner (Yale), Katherine Costello (Duke), and Eric Fassin (Paris 8). OCTOBER 27 Omnia El Shakry (UC Davis), “The Arabic Freud Eichner pointed out that regardless of our feelings about and the Invention of the Psychosexual Subject,” marriage, we could all agree that if straight people had access Psychoanalysis in an International Frame series to marriage, gay people ought to too. She acknowledged that marriage has historically been a heteronormative institution of exclusion that has supported models of gender complementarity OCTOBER 27 and inequality and reinforced racial exclusion. She argued that Graduate Scholars Colloquium: “A Loud Silence: Sound in the Islamic Context and What it Means for - CONTINUED ON PAGE 15 - Sex and Gender,” Kiah Glenn (Religious Studies)

- CONTINUED ON PAGE 7 -

2 of 16 been translated through legal of consent was adequate, frameworks, and thus the emerging as it did from the Director’s “crime” of rape is understood history of women as property. in terms of its potential for Equally problematic is the criminal definition. The form blanket assertion that rape is Column of criminality associated with violence and not sex, as if the rape goes back in legal history question of the particularly violence on the campus. The to understanding rape as a sexual nature of the assault story oscillated between on the crime of property—a crime, were irrelevant, and as if the one hand making UVA sound for example, against the father nature of sex itself—indeed of worse than most places, and of the victim. The idea of sexuality beyond the act--as on the other, making it into an the use or abuse of another’s an ambiguous category were example of the larger problem property continues into the not worthy of investigation. of rape at universities. The moment in which women have topic of rape at universities has the right to refuse being used. Force, harm, property, become a source of national In other words, consent is less contract, power, violence, fear, concern outside and inside about agreeing to something, genocidal and reproductive university settings, with many, and more about refusing violation—the terms that are “ Obviously there has been huge debate around whether the liberal feminist model of consent was adequate, emerging as it did from the history of women as property.”

Ranjana Khanna feminists included, concerned access. What counts as associated with the feminist MARGARET TAYLOR SMITH about the manner in which consent is very complicated to scholarship and activism on DIRECTOR OF WOMEN’S STUDIES accuser and accused are being assess; it has been understood rape have unfortunately all treated. in terms not only of verbal failed to address questions n Fall 2014, assertion, but also in the of desire and sexuality newspapers were It has struck me and also a more ambiguous question themselves. Perhaps if we filled with the Rolling number of my colleagues in of how to read women’s began to more carefully IStone story about informal conversation how behavior. Both verbal and address these, we would more a UVA orchestrated gang inadequate to the task of behavioral notions of consent effectively deal with rape, rape. The story, subsequently dealing with rape feminist have muddied the waters as and with the feminist failure discredited, was composed to thought has been. Over and much as clarified them. to address it adequately. highlight the sensational event, over again, rape is pushed but also gestured toward the through the mill of language Obviously there has been larger problem of covering about consent. Social huge debate around whether up various incidents of sexual conceptions of rape have the liberal feminist model

3 of 16 WS Newsletter Faculty Updates

anjana on Life, Politics and Art (Duke 2014): and at Swarthmore and doing research at Yale Khanna spent University Press 2011). College (October 2014). This University’s Beinecke fall semester year, Frances is serving as Library. In the summer of R setting up the an Editor of the Journal of 2014, an essay titled “Modern International Psychoanalysis rances S. Middle East Women’s Studies Spectacle and American talks, getting to know our Hasso was on beginning with Vol. 11 (2015). Feminism’s Disappointing four fantastic post-doctoral a sabbatical The journal’s editorial office, Daughters: Writing Fantasy scholars, and teaching the research which is partly supported Echoes in The Portrait of course related to that theme. F by Duke Women’s Studies, a Lady” was published in leave during 2013-2014. She has also been traveling She initiated new research has moved to Duke and the Feminist Theory, and in to give talks about her work projects in Bahrain and University of North Carolina January of 2015, an essay on from Cornell to Kalamazoo. Egypt, including fieldwork at Chapel Hill for the next Harlem Renaissance writer Ranji added, “I have also had in Cairo, and co-organized four years. The publisher is Jessie Fauset’s engagement the real pleasure of hiring the Geographies of Gender now Duke University Press. with and representation of our new staff members, in the Arab Revolutions In fall 2014, Frances co-taught fashionable clothing will Kelly Schwehm and Sheila Workshop in December with Nadia Yaqub of UNC appear in the collection Devis who work with 2013 for a forthcoming book a lively graduate seminar, Crossing in Text and Textile. Kim Carlisle, the Business that includes a chapter she Critical Genealogies in Middle Kimberly is also editing a Manager of Women’s Studies authored titled, “Sectarian/ East Studies, which fulfills special issue of Women & who joined us last year.” Gendered Police & Rupture in the requirements for the Performance titled “Texting Bahrain’s Pearl Revolution.” joint Duke-UNC Graduate Girls: Images, Sounds, and Frances also published an Certificate in Middle East Words in Neoliberal Cultures lizabeth Grosz article, “Bargaining with the Studies and included students of Femininity,” which builds taught two Devil: States and Intimate from Duke, UNC, and North upon her first-year seminar classes in fall, an Life,” in the Journal of Middle Carolina State University. “Girls Go Global,” which she undergraduate East Women’s Studies, vol. Frances is also Director really enjoys teaching. In the E of Duke’s International spring of 2015, Kimberly will called Thinking Gender and a 10:2 (Spring 2014). She graduate student class called gave invited talks on new Comparative Studies Program. present a paper on Gordon Feminism, Visuality, and work at the 20th anniversary Parks’ photographs of Jim Space. This Spring she is conference of the Institute Crow segregation—focusing teaching the undergraduate of Women’s Studies, Birzeit imberly in particular on his attention course Freud and Feminism University in the Occupied Lamm spent to women’s clothing—at the and a graduate course called West Bank (October 2014); at the last year University of Johannesburg, Time and Becoming. Liz has a workshop titled, “Debating K completing published many scholarly the ‘Woman Question’ in her book manuscript— articles and several books, the New Middle East,” at “The Poetics of Address: most recently, Becoming Columbia University’s Global Writing the Other Woman Undone Darwinian Reflections Center in Amman (May in Contemporary Art”—

4 of 16 where she has been asked the Humanities Writ Large bright, talented students who forthcoming from the journal to be a research associate. program. Through the forced her to move beyond South Atlantic Quarterly. grant, he helped to stage a her own ailments. Together, series of public events that Kathy and her students abriel examined the cultural and examined lots of background ra Wilson, Rosenberg political contexts informing work in feminist theory Director of spent the fall contemporary food aesthetics. and human exceptionalism. Graduate working on For the largest of these events, Kathy reflected, “I started Studies, G he worked with Duke Dining school in August in a wheel A the finishing touches for his conducted research on medical book, The 4-H Harvest: The Services on a special meal in chair, moved through tourism in Bangkok, Thailand State and Sexuality in Rural the East Campus Marketplace. several different walkers, this summer, funded by a America, which is currently in The meal’s menu underscored and am now on a cane. I Duke Global Health Institute production with the University the culinary continuities credit much of this healing Grant -- and Duke students of Pennsylvania Press. He also between the cuisines of the to the community I live in and alum from Thailand completed chapters for two Carolina low-country and east at Duke and in Durham.” helped by connecting her with edited volumes forthcoming in Africa, and, through special medical staff to interview. 2015: “Youth as Infrastructure: “pop-up” lectures during the In her disciplinary field of 4-H and the Intimate State meal, diners learned about the anthropology, she serves as in 1920s Rural America” Afro-Atlantic diaspora that athi Weeks co-chair of the Association of in Boundaries of the State fashioned these continuities. taught two Queer Anthropology and had a in US History, eds. James Over a thousand students classes this chapter on “Urban Sexualities” Sparrow, William Novak, and members of the Durham fall, Sex published in Companion community enjoyed the meal. K and Steven Sawyer (Chicago: Work and Money, Sex and to Urban Anthropology, University of Chicago Press) Power for undergraduates. ed. Don Nonini (Wiley). and “A Classroom in the This spring she is teaching Her team-taught course on Barnyard: Reproducing athy Rudy an undergraduate course Nature/Nurture Sex/Gender Heterosexuality in American has had a focused on Feminist Activism was selected as a Discovery 4-H” in Queering the challenging in theory and practice and Course for Bass Connections, Countryside: New Direction K year. In a graduate course called Brain & Society theme. in Rural Queer Studies, eds. June 2013, she had a major Debates in Women’s Studies. Mary Gray, Colin Johnson, accident and was hospitalized, A new essay on the radical and Brian Gilley (New York: operated on, and in rehab for feminist Shulmaith Firestone, New York University Press). most of that year. She had which is part of a larger In addition, he was one of two more surgeries in 2014 project on 1970s feminism, is the primary conveners of to reconstruct her right leg. an interdisciplinary grant, Getting back to work proved “Subnature and Culinary to be the best medicine. Both Cultures” funded through of her classes were filled with

5 of 16 WS Newsletter Report from the Eighth Annual Feminist Theory Workshop By Clare Counihan PROGRAM COORDINATOR, House Drysdale Regents Chair the Universe Halfway: based violence” to narrower CAROLINA WOMEN’S CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA in Law, University of Texas at Quantum Physics and the “sexual violence” as a AT CHAPEL HILL Austin. Entanglement of Matter and part of the criminalization Meaning (Duke, 2007), to in international courts of athering Dr. Deutscher’s talk, “This consider the ramifications wartime rape. Questioning faculty and Death Which Is Not One: of a feminist understanding the assumption that rape is graduate Woman as Exception of matter and time. the absolute worst act of G students from in Derrida’s The Death violence, she juxtaposed across the world, the two-day Penalty,” examined how Dr. Nelson’s talk, “A Dream this legal redefinition with workshop generated passionate sexual difference impacts Deferred: Biopolitics after the the UN’s celebrity-driven exchanges and thoughtful Derrida’s philosophical Genome,” considered the ways “Stop Rape Now” campaign, conversations about a number argument against the death in which the availability of which shifts from legal of questions, reflecting the penalty. Her argument used DNA profiling reconfigures the recourse to public shame. ongoing vitality of feminist Michel Foucault’s notion relationship between “roots- theories. Last year’s speakers, of biopower—the modern seekers”—African Americans While the four speakers especially, underscored the nation-state’s techniques searching for their African all work in very different wide range of disciplines for controlling its populace origins—and contemporary disciplines - philosophy, to which feminist analyses through the multiple kinds civil rights movements. She particle physics, sociology, make important contributions: of bodily regulation, from asked, does the search for and legal theory-- the Karen Barad holds a Ph.D. public health practices to DNA answers reflect a flight participants' questions and in theoretical particle physics the “legal” execution of from the shortcomings of the closing round table revealed and is a Professor of Feminist prisoners—to expose how US civil rights movement, or a common thread question, Studies, Philosophy, and the the pregnant woman reveals is it the basis of an alternative how do our ways of knowing History of Consciousness at the logical and ethical crisis reconciliation project that lays the world--whether grounded the University of California at the heart of arguments the past to rest by resolving its in the ethical refusal of at Santa Cruz; Penelope around the death penalty. controversies scientifically? the death penalty, feminist Deutscher is a Professor of physics, genealogy, or legal Philosophy at Northwestern Dr. Barad’s talk, “Queering Dr. Karen Engle’s talk, “The distinctions--become the University; Alondra Nelson Time: Material Entanglements, Grip of Sexual Violence,” basis for our actions and our is Professor of Sociology at Temporal Diffractions, traced the changing language attempts to redress social Columbia University; and and Re-memberings,” of United Nation Resolutions injustice and inequality. Karen Engle is the Minerva drew on her book, Meeting from the broader “gender

6 of 16 WOMEN’S STUDIES 2014 FALL 2014 EVENTS

Feminist OCTOBER 29 Gohar Homayounpour (Freudian Group of Tehran and Shahid Besheti University Tehran), Prof Theory Ranjana Khanna (Women’s Studies), Prof Negar Mottahedeh (Literature), “Psychoanalysis and the Veil.” panel discussion, Psychoanalysis Workshop in an International Frame series By Jacqueline Dalziell PH.D. CANDIDATE, UNIVERSITY NOVEMBER 3 OF NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA Gohar Homayounpour (Freudian Group of Tehran and Shahid Besheti University Tehran), “Doing s the lines of feminist inquiry in my own work Psychoanalysis in Tehran,” Psychoanalysis unearth challenging questions, it was a great in an International Frame series privilege to engage first hand with such renowned A thinkers and further finesse my understanding of their intellectual contributions. I am incredibly grateful to NOVEMBER 4 Duke University and the Women’s Studies Department for their Gohar Homayounpour, (Freudian Group generous travel grant. Attending the Feminist Theory Workshop of Tehran and Shahid Besheti University enabled me to sharpen my understandings of the keynote’s Tehran), “Geographies of Psychoanalysis,” works, as well as my understanding of current and past trends Psychoanalysis in an International Frame series within the discipline. NOVEMBER 17 Graduate Scholars Colloquium: James Ong (Philosophy), “Organic Social Change” Hysteria

NOVEMBER 21 Nicole R. Fleetwood (Rutgers University), “Posing in Prison”

DECEMBER 1 Ross Truscott (2014-15 WST Post-Doctoral Associate), “The Echo of empathy in Nandipha FTW International Awardees Mntambo’s The Encounter,” Psychoanalysis in an International Frame series

7 of 16 WS Newsletter Psychoanalysis Lecture Series The Year of Psychoanalysis in an International Frame (Continued from page 1)

• Unseen City: Traveling Psychoanalysis and the Urban Poor, Ankhi Mukherjee, Sep 29

• Beautiful Difference: From Hysteria in the Barrio to Transgender Plasticity, Patricia Gherovici, Oct 20

• The Arabic Freud and the Invention of the Psychosexual Subject, Omnia El Shakry, Oct 27

• Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran, Gohar Homayounpour, Nov3

• Geographies of Psychoanalysis, Gohar Homayounpour, Nov 4.

psychology, psychoanalysis, and sexuality to be compelling and Islamic mystical and questions. On the pages of this ethical traditions. The journal, Egyptian readership OMNIA EL SHAKRY intellectual hybridity fostered encountered theories that by this journal and thinkers explained how heterosexual By Ali Altaf Mian such as Murad and Ziywar masculinity and femininity problematize claims of PH.D. CANDIDATE, PROGRAM IN RELIGION, were nearly impossible norms DUKE UNIVERSITY incompatibility between of psychosexual development. psychoanalysis and Islam. At places, readers were n conjunction with its annual theme, “Psychoanalysis even introduced to the in an International Frame,” the Program in Women’s El Shakry also discussed desirability of homosocial Studies hosted UC-Davis historian Omnia El Shakry how post-WWII discourses romantic attachments as the I whose forthcoming monograph tentatively titled, The increasingly theorized the quintessential model for Arabic Freud, will cast much-needed light on the intersections of female body and psychosexual ideal heterosexuality. In a Middle East studies and Psychoanalysis. El Shakry presented on formation. This body of work lively Q&A session following the emergence of the psychosexual subject in postwar Egyptian asked innovative questions, her talk, El Shakry also discourses, especially as evident in the Journal of Psychology extending the limits of discussed the methodological (Majallat ‘ilm al-nafs). Founded in 1945 by the Egyptian the thinkable in Egyptian implications of doing the psychology professor Yusuf Murad and psychoanalyst Mustafa academic circles. The various history of sexuality in Ziywar, this journal disseminated innovative discussions about contributors to the Journal of Islamicate contexts. human sexuality. These discussions simultaneously invoked Psychology considered gender

8 of 16 ANKHI MUKHERJEE By Ross Truscott POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, PROGRAM IN WOMEN’S STUDIES, DUKE UNIVERSITY

nkhi Mukherjee, Professor of English at Oxford University, visited Duke at the end of September 2014 as part of the Women’s A Studies annual theme, Psychoanalysis without precedent, nor free of the way poverty may be in an International Frame. On the 29th of September conflict and contradiction. pathologized, or difference Mukherjee presented a talk titled, “Unseen City: Travelling rendered characteristically, and Psychoanalysis and the Urban Poor,” offering reflections Secondly, and connecting developmentally, primitive, on the free or low cost clinics in Bangalore, Bombay with Mukherjee’s ongoing as it has been even by Indian and Kolkata she has been shadowing. The material concerns with canonicity analysts, specifically Sudhir presented, as Mukherjee explained, was part of a larger and postcoloniality, with the Kakar—Mukherjee sought interdisciplinary project, in its initial phases, looking reinscription of the canon in her talk to abide by the at the institution of psychoanalysis and its relationship for and as postcoloniality, idea and the practice of the to poverty and race in the context of three global cities, psychoanalytic case studies, psychoanalytic free clinic, Mumbai, London and New York. In her talk, Mukherjee particularly Freud’s early free to its analysands, its brought together several currents in psychoanalytic history ones, are frequently read, practitioners free to improvise that converge and assume complex figurations in the and with some justification, on a disciplinary order. context of the urban slums of India. I highlight just two. for their novelistic qualities. Perhaps the most impressive Here, questions can be posed point Mukherjee left us with Firstly, the payment of a fee for treatment is traditionally seen about the genre of the clinical is that, while psychoanalysis to be crucial to the transference relation in psychoanalysis. case and its reinterpretation is frequently imposed, wildly, The transference is, at once, an obstacle to the “talking in a postcolonial setting, from above and outside, the cure” and the means of working through, cordoning off a the staging of clinical case arbiter of truth, the encounters tendency to repetition, to acting out, and running it through presentations and the writing between psychoanalysis and the transferential circuit. That is, through the payment of of lives within the parameters Indian intellectuals and health a fee, the libidinal economy of the psychoanalytic dyad is of a particular genre. While care practitioners, from the set in play, the analysand becoming bonded, so to speak, attentive to the “calm 1920s onwards, has not left to the analyst, cathected but also invested. Less frequently violence” of psychoanalysis— psychoanalysis unscathed, recalled, however, is that Freud had, with his psychoanalytic the way it can function as a the axioms of its discourse associates, initiated free clinics in Vienna and elsewhere from form of civilizing mission unchallenged or reconfigured. 1918 onwards. While the emergence of free clinics in cities that spread to the colonial across Europe in the 1920s should be understood within the world with missionary zeal; context of political shifts in the interwar period, rather than the way it may function, in the effect of any single willful individual analyst, they are an psychotherapeutic form, as a integral part of the disciplinary formation of psychoanalysis. palliative apology for ongoing The free clinics Mukherjee attends to are, then, by no means socioeconomic inequality;

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Homayounpour also discussed in her book manuscript for how some analysands veil the exotic Iranian subject, the and unveil in the course of enigmatic pain and trauma an analytic session to control of the Eastern Other. She anxiety – in the way that turned a critical eye on the one might hide emotions or expectation that she perform reveal them depending on an unveiling and reveal the one’s feeling of comfort and truth of the Other’s otherness. safety. She ended her talk Insisting that “pain is pain” by interrogating the chador’s everywhere and that the ego functions and voicing Other’s strangeness resides skepticism about the veil- in oneself, she instead talked as-refuge: that which shields about her own sense of can also become a prison, dislocation and loss upon GOHAR a container that prevents returning to Iran to start a the exposure necessary for clinical practice after a twenty separation from the mother’s year stay and psychoanalytic HOMAYOUNPOUR desire and, therefore, training in the United States. autonomy and subjectivity. Iranian patients face problems By Anna Fishzon specific to their country’s The next two talks, on politics and culture, to be POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, PROGRAM IN WOMEN’S STUDIES, November 3-4, focused on sure, but for Homayounpour, DUKE UNIVERSITY Homayounpour’s work in experience in the consulting ohar Homayounpour, psychoanalyst and Iran, including her current room confirms the universality Professor of Psychology at Shahid Besheti project Geographies of of the Oedipus complex. University Tehran, visited campus for two weeks Psychoanalysis, which While in the United States and gave three moving and provocative talks. promotes investigation of neurotics are rumored to G various “contaminations” that have disappeared from The first, on October 29, was part of a panel with Professors Ranjana Khanna and Negar Mottahedeh on Psychoanalysis occur when psychoanalysis psychoanalytic couches, and the Veil, a discussion of the chador as a psychic object as spreads and lives beyond replaced by patients with well as social symbol. Homayounpour has been interested the places it has achieved supposedly more “primitive” in the personal and intrapsychic meanings of the chador and institutionalization; and her narcissistic organization her conclusions are drawn from her clinical experience. She recently published book, and borderline personality proposed that because mothers often enforce veiling, wearing Doing Psychoanalysis in disorders, in Tehran, the chador invokes maternal authority rather than paternal law. Tehran -- part memoir, part claims Homayounpour, In psychoanalytic terms, the chador functions as a transitional collection of clinical vignettes, consummately neurotic object and the mother’s protective second skin – a private and part elegy. During the analysands dominate the maternal space penetrating the paternal public domain. The talk and question and answer clinical landscape, constantly chador thereby not only signifies objects but also enables session, Homayounpour speaking of sex, sexuality, and and constitutes a fantasy space: the fantasy of sharing a skin elaborated on the book’s typically Oedipal conflicts. with the mother, of seeing without being seen – indeed, of defiant stance against the gaze subverting patriarchal authority and inverting its power relation. of Western publishers, editors, and journalists who searched

10 of 16 PATRICIA GHEROVICI By Carolina Diaz POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE, PROGRAM IN WOMEN’S STUDIES, DUKE UNIVERSITY

atricia Gherovici, renowned Lacanian psychoanalyst and senior member and faculty at Apres-Coup Psychoanalytic Association American and democratic New York, visited our long year seminar concerns the politics of P transgenderism and her call for than choosing your own on “Psychoanalysis in an International Frame” to deliver gender, hence the befitting her complex and elegant talk “Beautiful Difference: From a depathologization of it; the title of her second book Hysteria in the Barrio to Transgender Plasticity.” At the second is her reinvigoration Please Select your Gender. If intersection of clinical practice and theoretical discourse, of the category of hysteria. hysteria as a psychoanalytic Gherovici has authored the award winning book The category has been considered Puerto Rican Syndrome and the groundbreaking revision Based on her clinical work, démodé since the early 50’s, of gender identity politics Please Select your Gender: Gherovici revised the the clinic showed Gherovici From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of hysterics’ question, “am I hysteria is alive in the barrio, Transgenderism, two forthcoming edited volumes, and her a man or a woman?” with a sociopolitical location which latest work entitled Psychoanalysis needs a Sex Change: the most postmodern “am I allowed the return of and to Lacanian Approaches to Sexual and Social Difference straight or am I bisexual.” Her hysteria. Gherovici asked (Routledge, 2015). The Puerto Rican Syndrome was practice showed her as well us to pay careful attention informed by years of clinical practice in the Puerto Rican that transgender people will, to the hysteric’s language barrio of North Philadelphia; it is a transhistorical and in fact, take the hysteric’s from which psychoanalytic cross-cultural study that analyzes the so-called “Puerto question as an answer: “I am theory got its name “talk Rican syndrome,” which was first coined in the 1950s a man trapped in a woman’s therapy,” to understand it as when Puerto Rican soldiers were returning from the Korean body.” This dialogic encounter an unraveling of a certain War, in the context of contemporary Hispanic communities allows Gherovici to posit that history, which changes with living in ghettos of the First World. Gherovici draws on what is problematic for both time, to decipher the hysteric’s Lacan’s revolutionary “French Freudianism” to understand hysterics and transgender language, insofar as it is a hysteria as less of a neurosis and more as a socio-political people is not gender but sexual politicized speech and insofar symptom that can produce knowledge. Many were the difference. More incisively, as all language production is critical points raised by Gherovici’s talk from the artfulness Gherovici concluded that also a knowledge production. of the syntome and ataque de nervios as allegories of social transgenderism has modified contexts to questioning the ways in which psychoanalytic psychoanalytic practice. An theories of ego formation can account for Latin@ identities acute reader of the political, and the possibilities or impossibilities of thinking about Gherovici suggests, playfully, sexual difference outside the phallus. The first one however, accurately, that nothing could be more

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The Ninth Annual SAVE Feminist Theory THE Workshop: March 20-21, 2015

The annual Feminist Theory Workshop offers a unique opportunity for scholars to engage in sustained dialogue about feminist theory as a scholarly domain of inquiry. The “workshop” approach of this conference DATE requires active participation of both presenters and attendees.

12 of 16 Zeb Tortorici By Pete Sigal PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE STUDIES, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, DUKE UNIVERSITY

n September 25th, thanks to the support of Women’s Studies and other departments and programs, I had the great pleasure of hosting Zeb Tortorici, assistant professor of Spanish and O Portuguese at New York University. Tortorici gave a lunch time talk on “Visceral Archives of the Body,” and an evening discussion of his book

manuscript, “Sins Against works not on the reparative a relationship mediated by and readers—that appear most Nature: Sexuality, Colonialism project, but rather on the affect and the visceral. One clearly in Tortorici’s work. and Historical Archives in relationship between affect witnesses the relationships that New Spain, 1530-1821.” and embodiment. Throughout he developed with colonial the talk and the ensuing lively subjects, mediated through the In the lecture, Tortorici discussion, we found that archive, in discussing pleasure, focused on an interdisciplinary Tortorici had an engrossing desire, and disgust. It is exploration of the relationship interdisciplinary approach to these embodied enactments— between the visceral and the thinking about the ways in between individuals charged process of archivization. He which individuals experience with crimes, those charging focused on specific cases from both archives and sexual acts. them, individuals in colonial the colonial Mexican archive communities who hear about that involved bestiality and In the evening discussion, the the cases through gossip sexual acts between humans class members of History/ or more official channels, and gods or demons. In each Women’s Studies 501S (The notaries, archivists, historians, case, Tortorici focused on History of Sexuality) engaged the visceral reactions that in a spirited analysis of took place from the initial Tortorici’s book manuscript, discovery/invention of the act, which focuses on the witness testimony, juridical categorization of the unnatural authority, archivization, in colonial New Spain. In and the scholar’s reading the manuscript, Tortorici of the text in the archive. presents the relationship Tortorici, in thinking about between sexuality, nature, affect and the visceral, is humans, animals, and the one of the rare historians to divine. Most pertinently, venture into the particular he discusses his own bodily wing of queer theory that relationship with the archive,

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The Haunted Present:

Yvette Christiansë, Professor of English and Africana Reckoning Studies Barnard College.

After ApartheidLorem ipsum dolor sit amet consecteture lpsum dolor By Clare Counihan

PH.D., VISITING RESEARCH SCHOLAR WOMEN’S STUDIES, DUKE UNIVERSITY

From April 26-29, 1994, University hosted a two day historical erasures haunting Violent Intimacy” that seems South Africa held universal, interdisciplinary conference, South Africa, she ranged to beset South African daily democratic elections for the “The Haunted Present: widely over South African life—from rampant HIV to first time. The subsequent Reckoning After Apartheid,” fiction, from Andre Brink “epidemic” rape and domestic years, marked initially to reflect on the no-longer to Kgebetli Moele. violence. Lucy Valerie with euphoric hopes for new South Africa. Generously Graham (English, NYU) and racial healing enabled by co-sponsored by Women’s The panels the following day Tiffany Willoughby-Herard institutional processes such as Studies and organized by brought together scholars (Political Science, University the Truth and Reconciliation Anne-Maria Makhulu from many disciplines of California, Irvine), explored Commission (TRC), have (Cultural Anthropology, and institutions. Robin the knowledges about South more recently inspired despair African and African American Turner (Political Science, Africa that currently compete about epidemic levels of HIV/ Studies) and Clare Counihan Butler) and Hylton White to define the country, its AIDS, violent crime, state (Women’s Studies Visiting (Anthropology, University of past and its future. The corruption, and unbridled Researcher) as part of the the Witwatersrand) untangled closing roundtable, for which market reforms directed at Consilium on Southern the multiple overlapping Diane Nelson (Cultural everything from property to Africa’s programming for the and competing social and Anthropology, Latin American bodies to babies. At the same year, the conference returned legal systems that regulate Studies, Duke) joined time, seemingly beleaguered again and again to gendered individuals’ relationships the organizers, turned the state officials deploy the violence as trope for reckoning to the land, including the participants attention explicitly mantra “TINA” (There Is the persistent inequalities in notion that “tradition” is to questions of reckoning, from No Alternative [to neoliberal the post-apartheid state. a self-explanatory entity. the precedent of Guatemala’s development]) to fend off Neville Hoad (English, (incomplete) reconciliation critiques of growing income Yvette Christiansë (Barnard) University of Texas, Austin) after its civil war to the more and wealth inequalities. established key themes and Elaine Salo (Political literal forms of debt that for the conference in Science and International pervade South African life. Almost twenty years exactly her keynote, “Speaking, Relations, Women and after those elections and Between Ellipses and Eden.” , University only months after the death Arguing for literature’s key of Delaware) examined of Nelson Mandela, Duke role in understanding the the “Intimate Violence and

14 of 16 Kinship Trouble The EQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE DEBATES

(Continued from page 1) instead of disestablishing been accreted to marriage, and queer worldmaking. between whites and blacks, marriage, however, we needed arguing that such bundling She also suggested we could operating on the stereotype of to broaden and democratize it. has colonized our historical turn gay marriage into a the black child who is born memory and reduced our Trojan Horse that could out of wedlock. In comparing Pham described her clients’ capacity to think about love dismantle the institution the American and French strategies for forming families as it exists outside marriage. from the inside and create cases, Fassin articulated the despite the law’s resistance. In closing, Warner asked something queer instead. need to pay attention to the The LGBT community, as she his listeners to consider Costello suggested that rhetoric of sexual democracy put it, is the vanguard of legal the global consequences of perhaps the queerest strategy and how race and sex can innovation, and she cited the advancing gay rights in the in response to marriage would both work together or be queer community members in United States and to question not be to deny or avoid it, at odds in the enterprise of Durham who have challenged the transcendental status but to infiltrate it instead. forging a national identity. legal practitioners like her to people uncritically accord to help them make families that are marriage and the role the state Fassin brought a comparative Anne Garréta reminded us polyamorous. While recognizing plays in imbuing marriage perspective to the issue that there is no one meaning the community’s capacities with such sacred status. of same-sex marriage. He to marriage, as apparent in the for legal improvisation, Pham compared the debates in five speakers’ presentations pointed out two major areas Costello began her talk France and in the United and that there is no one root that pose problems for them: with a rehearsal of all the States around marriage and to all alienation, which means property law and parentage. critiques she might bring to called attention to the politics that our response must be as With regard to property, same- bear against marriage if she of national identity and the complex and heterogeneous sex couples in North Carolina were “a good queer political logic and rhetoric that nations as the oppressive ideas they have no way of equitably subject.” She identified these use to construct it. Fassin respond to. Our work is cut dividing assets that have been critiques as being normative pointed out that France was out for us as we try to engage acquired communally when queer positions on the issue sacralizing filiation (a direct in the task of, to use Garreta’s relationships come to an end, of same-sex marriage in the line of descent) and the United words, “a complex rewriting and are thus left without the United States. While she States, marriage. Hence the of scripts that account for our protections of divorce. recognized their value in panic in France is over the choices, our behaviors, and the helping us understand the question of gay couples having things we want to signify.” Warner set out to demystify epistemological framework in children through artificial the ritual nature of marriage which marriage is articulated, reproductive technologies that and articulate the geopolitical she pointed out that the disturb the logic and clarity of dimensions that inhere in inevitability of gay marriage filiation. In the United States, gay marriage rights. He placed us in the position marriage is sacralized because called for an “unbundling” now of having to rethink our it also performs a certain of all the symbolism that has strategy of queer critique differentiation, in this case,

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Spring 2O15 COURSES

Gender of Everyday Life Freud & Feminism WOMENST 101S Gabriel Rosenberg WOMENST 373S Elizabeth Grosz WOMENST 190S Sexual Ethics in South Africa WOMENST 499S Senior Seminar Michelle Wolf Ranjana Khanna WOMENST 213S Feminist Art From the 1970s to WOMENST 590S Voice, Opera & Sexuality the Present Anna Fishzon Kimberly Lamm WOMENTST 360S Feminist Activism WOMENST 601S Debates in Women’s Studies Kathi Weeks Kathi Weeks WOMENST 361 Money, Sex, Power WOMENST 701S Foundations in Feminist Theory Ara Wilson Kimberly Lamm WOMENST 364S Race, Gender, and Sexuality WOMENST 770 Interdisciplinary Research Workshop: Russ Truscott Psychoanalysis & Neuroscience Renata Salecl WOMENST 369S Transnational Feminism WOMENST 890S.01 Time & Becoming Frances Hasso Elizabeth Grosz WOMENST 370S Queer Theory WOMENST 890S.02 Infrastructure Gabriel Rosenberg Ara Wilson