Katarzyna Szopa, PhD, University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland)
The goal of this presentation is to discuss the broad concept of new feminist materialism(s) and its connections with previous theories, especially with so called second-wave feminism. I want to ask to what extent “new feminist materialism” is new, and how can we use its theoretical instrumentation in order to return to past feminist perspectives ?
First, I want to present a new anti-methodological strategy of reading, based on anti-classification and anti-generational practices, that challenges previous dialectical narrations of feminist theories. I believe that such a reading could be, in contrast to the poetics of idolatry or criticism, an alternative strategy of affirmative reading, which leads to the practice of dialogue between various generations of feminist theoreticians, and creates new strategies of intercommunication between them. I want to discuss how can we use new materialists theoretical tools and concepts in order to reread second-wave feminist theory beyond essentialist and anti-essentialist paradigm ?
Using the strategy of cartographic reading together with methodological tools developed by new feminist materialists such as Rosi Braidotti or Karen Barad, I would like to stress the importance of relational ethics, which can be seen as a micropolitics of reading practice. The new materialist perspective, based upon an ethics of sexual difference and focused on the question of matter, can become a fruitful politics of transformation within contemporary feminist theories. It not only challenges the concept of representation, but offers a new strategy of reading, which is no longer a process focused on discovering the meaning, but rather a development of critical consciousness which lays the foundation for constituting new research and intellectual approaches.
