The Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory Seminar is delighted to welcome Jonathan Flowers, Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy & Religion at American University, who will be delivering a talk titled ‘The Affective Quality of Gender’:

Title: The Affective Quality of Gender

Abstract:

     While Judith Butler recognizes that identity, specifically gendered identities, are established through a stylized repetition of acts, and Shannon Sullivan connects this stylized repetition of acts to John Dewey’s concept of habit, this talk will seek to advance upon these theories by presenting the gendered identity established by these habits as one that is affective and qualitative, by placing both Butler and Sullivan in conversation with Richard Shusterman’s “somaesthetics” and the aesthetic philosophy of John Dewey. 

     On this view, the different gendered habits which are taken from or imposed upon us by culture serve to enable an affective perception of the body as not only gendered, but gendered in a specific way in line with our cultural expectations. This affective perception serves the ground of our immediate judgments of the gender of a body and serves to enable the denotation of bodies as gendered in social space.