Dear all,
It is my pleasure to cordially invite you to the next installment of the
Trans*Formation Talk Series at the Department of Philosophy at
University of Vienna, which showcases exciting new developments in Trans
Philosophy. This Thursday, 26.6., Prof. Emma Heaney from NYU will give
the talk "Provincializing Cisness" at 19:30 in HS 3A, NIG. Everyone is
welcome! Please also forward this invite to others who might be
interested!
Abstract:
Most examinations of sex and gender in the academy take bourgeois
national histories of North America and Western Europe as their frame of
reference. In the histories of Germany, the UK, France, and the United
States, doctors and state bureaucracies incorporated sexual and gendered
social practices into a taxonomy of identities (or even species, as
Foucault puts it,) beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. However, in
many sex-gender systems, including those of the proletarian
neighborhoods of these nations' metropoles, the assumptions that formed
expert orderings did not apply. This lecture surveys the non-cis
vernacular categories that ordered these sex-gender systems. The
relation between race/class and cisness means that there is no absolute
geography to this story. Drawing on source material from Indigenous
Americas to the South Asian subcontinent and from the working-class
neighborhoods of Kansas City to the courts of Nigerian nobility, the
talk will be attuned to a range of sex-gender systems that do not accord
with the categories produced by the Euro- American bourgeois in order
to, as the title suggests, reveal the provincial status of cisness.
The talk will be in English with ÖGS translation.
Bio:
Emma Heaney is a scholar and teacher of feminist theory, comparative
literature, and trans studies. Her first book, _The New Woman: Literary
Modernism, Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory [1]
_(Northwestern 2017) is a study of the prominence of the medicalized
figure of trans femininity in works of twentieth-century literature and
philosophy. Her edited collection _Feminism Against Cisness _ [2](Duke
2024) gathers essays that demonstrate the nature and potential of
feminist thought unobscured by the counterrevolutionary mystification of
assigned sex. _This Watery Place: Four Essays on Gestation [3] --- _a
political and phenomenological report from the gestational sensorium
against cisness, capital, and genocide --- is forthcoming from Pluto
Press in November 2025. Her current book project is a sequel edited
collection that draws on the work of scholars from many disciplines and
areas of geographical and historical focus to reveal the provincial
nature of the ideology of cisness. Forthcoming essays theorize the
emergence of the trans-gay distinction in the twentieth century via
literary representations. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the
XE program at New York University, where she serves as faculty advisor
for the Advanced Certificate in Experimental Writing.
I want to thank the VDP [4], the Culture & Equality Unit [5] of the
University of Vienna, queer@hochschulen [6], and ACCESTECH / TU Wien [7]
for their financial support dor this event.
Looking forward to seeing many of you at the talk!
All the best,
Flora Löffelmann
--
Flora Löffelmann, MA MA
University assistant & doctoral candidate
Department of Philosophy at University of Vienna
Pronouns: they/them (for more info see:
https://www.mypronouns.org/what-and-why/)
Happy about a gender neutral "hello"!
Links:
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[1]
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv47w5mz
[2]
https://www.dukeupress.edu/feminism-against-cisness
[3]
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745350158/this-watery-place/
[4]
https://vd-philosophy.univie.ac.at/
[5]
https://personalwesen.univie.ac.at/en/culture-equality/
[6]
https://queer-at-hochschulen.org/
[7]
https://www.experiencing-access.eu/de/news/