Assoziation:E and Des.orientierungstage in cooperation with TU Munich's Department of Science, Technology and Society invite you to contribute to this conference.
Since 2020, the university group "Desorientierungstage" and the non-profit association Assoziation:E e.V. have been organizing seminars and colloquia at the TU Munich. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the feminist group “Laboria Cuboniks”, whose theoretical approaches have provided important impulses not only for us, we are organizing a symposium in cooperation with the TUM Department of Science, Technology and Society at the end of this year. We cordially invite you to engage with the provocative perspectives of Laboria Cuboniks and to get involved with your own contributions.
Central to the work of Laboria Cuboniks is the concept of “xenofeminism”, which relates feminist thinking to the (technical) sciences and puts forward a multi-layered concept of the foreign (Greek xénos) against naturalisms. The claim here is to combine scientific abstraction and epistemologies as well as technological imagination with a striving for social realities without domination-shaped gendering and without identity-political objectification. The claim formulated in Xenofeminism is nothing less than to overcome discrimination on the basis of (alleged and real) differences as a whole.
This aspiration is rooted in the spirit of "Nicolas Bourbaki", an anagram of Laboria Cuboniks and the pseudonym of a predominantly French collective of authors who worked in the mid-20th century on the axiomatic justification of mathematics according to criteria of abstraction, universality and formal rigor. Important points of reference for Xenofeminism can be found in philosophy, design, architecture, mathematics, biology and engineering, meaning that the symposium is interdisciplinary in its approach by definition.
Xenofeminism thus stands in a modern-utopian tradition: it refers to classically modern (and previously male-formed and dominated) forms of thought and does not demand their abolition, but rather their feminist appropriation. This is linked to a utopian reference to the potentials of rationality and technology, inhibited by oppression, which feminists should not reject, but rather realize.
Call for Contributions
We invite you to actively contribute to the discourse. We welcome contributions from the fields of science, art and activism that explore Xenofeminist topics. Possible formats include:
Academic lectures (20 minutes + discussion)
Artistic performances or installations
Workshops (60-90 minutes)
Panel discussions
Poster presentations
Suggested topics (not exhaustive):
Xenofeminist perspectives in STEM disciplines
Queer and trans* technosciences
Feminism as critical theory
Posthumanist approaches in art and design
Deconstruction of gender through technology
Xenofeminism and political activism
Critical examination of the concept of “nature”
Intersectional perspectives on technology and feminism
We also explicitly encourage contributions that use the symposium as a space for political debate and exchange. Critical perspectives on Xenofeminism are explicitly welcome.
Please send your proposals (max. 300 words) to: info@assoziation-e.org
And don'tt hesitate to contact us if you have any questions :)
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