Denise Ferreira da Silva - Hacking the Subject: Black Feminism, Refusal, and the Limits of Critique

BCRW’s newest working group, Practicing Refusal: Thinking Beyond Resistance, kicks off with a public lecture by distinguished ethicist and feminist theorist, Denise Ferreira da Silva. Her talk engages what she sees as the fundamental challenge posed by black feminism: the questioning of a feminist critical grammar that re-produces any ‘proper’ apprehension of the female/the feminine and exposing the limits of what constitutes a ‘proper subject’. Her presentation aims to dissolve what she calls the patriarchal form of the subject. Refusing gender as the only critical tool for describing females’ socio-historical trajectories, Ferreira da Silva extends Hortense Spillers’ reconfiguration of ‘woman’, the female and the feminine, in ways that dis/order of the modern grammar of the patriarch.
Denise Ferreira da Silva is associate professor at the Institute for Research on Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice, University of British Columbia. She is the author of Toward a Global Idea of Race.
Recorded October 22, 2015 at Barnard College.
Help us caption & translate this video!
amara.org/v/H1g6/

[@mundomenta2830]

does someone get the name that she mentions before Sadiya Hatman?

[@kiannadieudonne6211]

I'm curious, too, but couldn't make it out! It reminded me, though, of Oyéronké Oyemwùmí's The Invention of Women when she says "researchers find gender when the look for it" (1997, 20). I haven't read it myself, but came across its reference in Lugones' Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System (2007) - which I love! happy reading :)

[@selaineful]

please fix the captions..this video is completely inaccesible!

[@selaineful]

How does speaking in such inaccessible language/vocab dissolve patriarchy? This seems like an amazing argument that had been pushed through white-patriachal academic requirements to be almost unhelpful

[@djkirstenangeldust6545]

we need more abstraction

[@KatCheairs]

This is a talk situated in critical theory. Critical theory is rooted in philosophy and has its own language, form and content. It's not for everyone but it doesn't make it invalid. Her work can be read, which may be a better point of entry. The purpose of critical theory is to interrogate and requires deep study, the unpacking of words, looking up vocabulary and engaging multiple texts. It is work.

[@maxwellbook6625]

Please go to sleep, Sarah. Theory needs us to be patient and READ. Your comment is dismissive - similar to the kind of women described by bell hooks in Teaching to Transgress (the idea that THEORY especially when packaged in the sophisticated language is useless and un-understandable). bell would say; READ, be patient. "Theory" is not packaged like tweeter tweets!.

[@selaineful]

this is very hard to understand

[@azeeznasser]

the language is as complicated as women themselves.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!