Dr. Stanimir Panayotov (MON Fellow, Oct ‘20 – Jun ‘21) will present his research project at CAS on the topic:

Feminisms beyond the Body: Towards a Feminist Theory of Disembodiment

05 November, 2020 at 16:30 h.

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Abstract:

Feminisms have always liked the body. The reason is somewhat reactionary, and the reaction is largely forgotten throughout centuries. It is rooted in Aristotle’s hylomorphism and its identification of the feminine principle with ugliness. Embracing this identification becomes the locus classicus of feminist philosophy’s project to institute femininity as both embodied and rational. Two sources have inspired feminist theorists to reduce and thus defend philosophical femininity as symptomatically embodied: Plotinus (Enneads, III.6) and Irigaray’s interpretation of him (Speculum of the Other Woman). In this project I critique Irigaray’s reading as central to demystifying the reduction of femininity to embodiment. My aim is to then build on this critique and offer a trajectory of interpreting femininity and womanhood as equally relevant to the Plotinian ideal of disembodiment which has traditionally been in turn reduced to a masculine
project.

The topic of my project is the necessity in the current historical momentum to develop a feminist theory (and not philosophy) of disembodiment. The topic is two-fold: disentangling femininity from embodiment in the Western metaphysical canon, and, on the basis of such disentanglement, synchronizing the allegedly masculinist ideal of disembodiment with a feminist project for disembodiment.

The main research question of the project is: How to arrive at a feminist theoretical notion of disembodiment (without having to denounce the feminist philosophical debunking of metaphysical reason)? But even if my critique of the Irigarayian reading of Plotinus is correct, how does it necessitate a feminist theory of disembodiment? Is a feminist theory of disembodiment anti-feminist? What are the epistemological and anthropological challenges and objections to such a theory, and if any, is their validity an argument against disembodiment? What are the contemporary conditions that make such a project emergent?

The main goal of this project is to develop a theoretical dissection of what I find to be the feminist philosophical locus classicus in the defense of femininity and womanhood within the confines of the Western metaphysical canon: namely, Aristotle’s hylomorphism (identification of chōra with hyle) and Plotinus’ re-interpretation of hylomorphism and synchronization with Platonic cosmology and theory of matter (the view that matter participates partially in intellect). Subsequently, the secondary, but more productive and affirmative goal is to develop a proposal for a feminist notion of disembodiment. Such notion is not necessarily “philosophical,” but  rather theoretical. (One of the principled troubles in critiquing feminist philosophy is, in my project, the fact that it is critiqued from within the limitations of the Principle of Sufficient Philosophy, as Laruelle defines it). I aim to explore in greater detail and in a different direction the potential of both the speculative turn in philosophy and the arrival of the non-philosophical school of thought to dramatize feminist disembodiment as an impending project.

Developing a feminist theory of disembodiment requires a formalized method of disengaging feminist philosophy and theory from the said notions of body and embodiment. This is why I will focus methodologically on: 1) Typologization (and thus simplification) of hithertoexisting feminist philosophies of embodiment (specifically those with an emphasis on ancient and late antique philosophies, and those following in the footsteps of Irigaray, e.g., Emmanuela Bianchi, Brooke Holmes); i.e., a reduction of arguments from embodiment to their properly “philosophical” and (often surreptitiously hidden) transcendental core which roots the defense of embodiment in non-transcendent materiality; 2) Surveying the typologization as “axiomatic” in the non-philosophical, Laruellian sense of the word, whereby the feminist theories and philosophies of embodiment are a) reduced to “theories,” b) defamiliarized from their philosophical causality and examined for their reversive potential to abet a feminist project of disembodiment. These two methodological steps will help me examine – and also radicalize – the vast literature on embodiment with the understanding that I need not reject the critique of disembodiment, but I need to reroute the philosophical idealism behind the defense of embodiment as reactionary and non-affirmative.