A Foucauldian-Feminist Approach to Countering Sexual Violence and Sexual Humiliation by Prof. Dianna Taylor

Abstract

Humiliation is a definitive but, within the discipline of philosophy, under-theorized harm of sexual violence against women. This talk draws upon the late work of Michel Foucault in order to provide an account of sexual humiliation resulting from sexual violence, as well as to posit ways in which sexual violence and sexual humiliation might be effectively countered. Given that sexual humiliation manifests within the relation of self-to-self, such countering calls for creation of new and subversive modes of self-relation.  The talk provides insight into what these alternative, counter-humiliating modes of self-relation might look like by analyzing specific instances of verbal and embodied feminist anti-sexual violence protest.

Speaker Biography 

Dianna Taylor is Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She has co-edited two volumes of essays, Feminism and the Final Foucault (University of Illinois Press, 2004) and Feminist Politics: Identity, Difference, Agency (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), and is editor of Michel Foucault: Key Concepts (Acumen Publishers, 2010). Her book, Sexual Violence and Humiliation: A Foucauldian-Feminist Perspective, is forthcoming with Routledge.