2010

Sexuality and Economy

research group (Berlin), 2007-2010
The research group focuses on thinking about the entire range of relationships that link sexuality, gender, and economics. How are the histories of capitalism and sexuality interconnected? Are changes in what Foucault calls the deployment of sexuality overlap with the development of capitalism? A historical perspective provides a framework for further questions: How can a queer theoretical critique of heteronormativity contribute to the critique of capitalism? How can we resist the dominance of capitalism and the heteronormative structuring of gender and sexuality? Which alternative models and queer (economic) utopias are thinkable – and liveable? In 2007 a two-day workshop discussed these questions extensively. The workshop built on outcomes from regular meetings that took place prior to the event in order to come up with ideas for an international conference. Major topics included: Rethinking capitalism from a monolithic concept into heterogeneous capitalisms; the role of desire in upholding or transforming capitalist relations; the promise and problems of pleasurable identification with labour relations under neoliberal conditions.

Continue reading

berlin queer salon

various locations, Berlin. 2010-2014
If queer is neither homogenous, nor fixable, where can diversity and movement meet? And how can that meeting be productive, provocative, and political? The Queer Salon is a monthly event-format that explores different forms of collective practices in the spectrum of queer politics. Alternating locations invite an examination of power relations in specific contexts as well as an opportunity to change them in order to express differences differently. A frivolous atmosphere replaces the classical format of political discussion.

Continue reading

Desiring Just Economies / Just Economies of Desire

conference, ICI, Berlin, 24.–26. June 2010
The conference sought to explore how desire not only sustains current economies, but also carries the potential for inciting new forms of understanding and doing economics by focussing on the notion of desire as a tool to explore the economy’s sexual dimension as much as the economic dimension of sexuality. The conference’s dual interests lies in unpacking how sexuality is implicit in economic processes and in unfolding how economics are linked to sexuality. How do current global economic processes (including production, re-production, consumption, circulation, speculation) constitute specific sexual identities and practices that support relations of exploitation, domination, and subjectivation? Conversely, how do ways of organizing sexuality influence economic processes?

Continue reading