Gender, Race, and Property: Timetable and Abstracts for the Workshop on May 18th

Ein Symposium der HUG. Mit Brenna Bhandar (SOAS London), Isabell Lorey (Academy of Media Arts Cologne), Eva von Redecker (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) und Adriana Zaharijević (University of Belgrade, University of Novi Sad).

9.15 am – 10.45 am
Modes of Abstraction: Race and Property
Input by Brenna Bhandar, comment by Eva von Redecker

In her presentation, Brenna Bhandar aims to explore Cedric Robinson’s concept of the racial regime, and to consider it specifically in the context of relations of ownership and possession. Based on her recently published book Colonial Lives of Property, she will draw on historical and contemporary examples of indigenous land dispossession to elaborate on how both property and race possess histories that are forged through an articulation with each other. This entanglement, haunted by the figure of the possessive individual, leads to several questions about the conditions necessary for freedom. Bhandar will speculate on whether de-propriation, or the estrangement of property from its current legal and social forms might offer some ways forward.

 

11.15 am – 12.45 pm
Ownership’s Shadow: Authoritarianism as Defense of Phantom-Possession
Input by Eva von Redecker, comment by Adriana Zaharijević

Eva von Redecker’s presentation proposes the term “propertization” as an analytic category for intersectional social theory. The concept is set to work in order to explicate contemporary neo-authoritarian tendencies as assertions of “phantom-possession”, that is individual sovereignty vis-a-vis reified others. Propertization shaped capitalist modernity since its beginnings in primitive accumulation, when the owner’s claim to absolute dominium entered the form of property, and it expands the application of such dominium to more abstract levels, comprising social relations, status, and identities. Eva von Redecker argues that property-like disposal over both the personhood of racialized subjects and feminized reproductive capacities serves the role of “phantom possession”; it embodies the unprecedented promise of volitional freedom wrought up by the modern form of absolute property even for those who actually suffer material dispossession.

 

2.00 pm – 3.30 pm
Who is ever in property of oneself?
Input by Adriana Zaharijević, comment by Isabell Lorey

Adriana Zaharijević’s presentation begins with the contemporary dependency trope which invites us to revisit the Victorian language of the sovereign, self-possessing individual. On the surface level, it appears that the notion of the individual refers to anyone and no one in particular. However, if we situate it in the vocabulary of the 19th century, the century of an individual, it becomes clear that this supposedly universal category has a very restricted application. The restrictions are related to the imagined property in oneself. Thus, the questions what is an individual and, furthermore, who is an individual are in place. The aim of the presentation is to unpack these questions and to conclude with an alternative scenario which does not revolve around the strict division between dependence and independence.

 

4.00 pm – 5.30 pm
Precariousness, Race, and (Queer) Debt
Input by Isabell Lorey, comment by Brenna Bhandar

Isabell Lorey’s presentation proposes a new understanding of social debt with the actualization of precariousness. She will focus on the following questions: In a debt economy, how is precarization and precariousness intertwined within the figure of the autonomous individual in gendered and racialized terms? Why is this entanglement dependent on the linearity of time with focus to a future? And what could a break with these logics look like?

 

5.30 pm – 6.00 pm
Concluding Discussion

 

        


PROGRAM

We offer childcare on site, please let us know by May 10th if you would like to use it


Friday, May 17th 

6.30 pm
PANEL DISCUSSION
Biergarten Jockel, Ratiborstr. 14c, 10999 Berlin

No registration needed


Saturday, May 18th

9.15 am to 6.00 pm
WORKSHOP
Aquarium im Südblock, Skalitzer Str. 6, 10999 Berlin

9.15 am – 10.45 am
Modes of Abstraction: Race and Property
Input by Brenna Bhandar, comment by Eva von Redecker

11.15 am – 12.45 pm
Ownership’s Shadow: Authoritarianism as Defense of Phantom-Possession
Input by Eva von Redecker, comment by Adriana Zaharijević

2.00 pm – 3.30 pm
Who is ever in property of oneself?
Input by Adriana Zaharijević, comment by Isabell Lorey

4.00 pm – 5.30 pm
Precariousness, Race, and (Queer) Debt
Input by Isabell Lorey, comment by Brenna Bhandar

5.30 pm – 6.00 pm
Concluding Discussion

Please register via agfemphil@hu-berlin.de


Sunday, May 19th

11.00 am to 1.00 pm
CLOSING EVENT

Only for the participants of the workshop