Politics of Love #6 - Softness

In the festival-edition of our discussion series Politics of Love, we deal with questions of vulnerability, emotionality and seriousness.

The current tendency towards softness as a performance strategy and as a gender-queer styling trend contains contradictions and raises questions: Can the new softness live up to its claim of alternative political principles of care and realize its refusal of gender dualisms? Or has it long been subject to a neoliberal logic that runs counter to its critical potential? Which conditions need to be given to oppose the hardness of current sexist and neo-fascist tendencies in a way that’s both gentle and determined? An evening about queerfeminist strategies between aesthetics and politics.

GUESTS

NADIAH RIEBENSAHM is studying for a Master's degree in Inszenierung der Künste und der Medien in Hildesheim. Riebensahm literarily and theatrically deals with topics of postcolonial studies in their artistic and academic work. Recurring motifs of these works are safe spaces, BIPoC empowerment and questions of intersectionality in queer discourses. From 2016 to 2019 Riebensahm has been part of the collective TEAM SOFT. Departing from friendships, the young collective attempted to negotiate racism-critical discourses with itself and the audience in two performances.

JULE GOVRIN is a philosopher whose research is located at the interface of political theory, social philosophy and aesthetics. She made her PhD at the FU Berlin on the history of the theory of desire and economics and has worked at the Institute for Queer Theory. Currently she is investigating the staging of authentic authority in the history of political ideas from the Enlightenment to the present.  Govrin is the author of Sex, God and Capital. Houellebecq's subjugation between neoreactionary rhetoric and post-secular politics (2016). In addition to her academic work, she has been active as a journalist, for example as a guest author for 10 after 8.