VLS-CUSO workshop 2024
The Ethics of Consumption:
Advocacy, Activism, Academia
Samantha Pergadia, Southern Methodist University, Texas
Alexa Weik von Mossner, University of Klagenfurt, Austria
Friday 10 May 2024
University of Geneva
The starting point for this workshop is the term “intersectionality,” coined by Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw. Intersectionality is Crenshaw’s term for the simultaneous experience of more than one system of domination. As a critical approach, intersectionality acknowledges that the domination of those who are marginalized as “Other” relates to a single paradigm of violence that is based on a gendered power binary. Intersectional critique does not address a single “cause” but works to counteract this logic of domination. Indeed, the intersectionality of Otherness encapsulates a range of marginalizing strategies that rely significantly on discursive processes of objectification and the production of consumable objects. Other-than-human animals offer a fundamental paradigm when they are transformed into the consumable commodity that is meat. Consumption, through food, fun, and fashion for example, is therefore an ethical flash-point that demands a choice between refusal of, or complicity with, the process of Othering. Intersectional analysis can illuminate the political implications of these choices.
The workshop encourages participants to reflect on the ways in which literary and cultural texts, in their domain of expertise, mobilize concepts of intersectional critique and Otherness, focused on ethical consumption. We want to pose the question: what we do with these academic concepts? What is the role of academia in respect to political critique? Is the classroom an appropriate space for activism and/or advocacy of social justice causes? What limits might we want to place on the politicization of research projects? What is the role of the academy as a site for advocacy and activism?
Report on the event by Caroline Martin (UNIGE)
0 March 2024
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Last updated on April 23rd 2024
SNSF project 100015_204481
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