The body as social sphere. Margins of gender and queer research

  • The body as social sphere. Margins of gender and queer research

    Mirosław Bałka, \"The boy and the eagle\", collection of Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw

The lecture, to be held as a performative lecture, will be focused around the main achievements of gender and queer research for the knowledge of the body and the process of social embodiment.

The crossing point of contemporary critical art with engaged human studies will be shown, with reference to the works of art presented in the Museum of Modern Art – i.e. the social mechanisms of producing the body, sex and sexuality will be revealed.

The illusion of autonomous intimacy and “privacy” will be undermined by revealing the techniques of disciplining the body and changing it into a submissive machine used for production/reproduction/consumption. The techniques become visible mainly in bodies which are disobedient, “eccentric”, which reach far beyond what is conventional, “normal” or expected, namely, in bodies of sexually non-standard people.

Jacek Kochanowski – head of the University of Warsaw - Institute of Applied Social Sciences – Centre for Social Studies on Sexuality, preoccupied with gender and queer studies, sociology of culture, sociology of the body, performance studies and post-colonial studies. In his academic research he incorporates reflections on contemporary art, treating the language of the art as parallel to purely academic discourse. His publications include: “Fantazmat zróżnicowany. Socjologiczne tadium tożsamości gejów” (Universitas, 2004), “Spektakl i wiedza. Perspektywa społecznej teorii queer” (W-Z, 2009), “Socjologia seksualności. Marginesy” (WN PWN 2012).
 

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