Antonia Birnbaum (Paris 8): "We, Women."

What Happened in the Algerian Maquis? “We, Women”

A talk by Antonia Birnbaum (Paris 8 University) on feminine jouissance, women's revolutionary activity and the problem of equality.

Thursday, 26 October 2017 from 5-7pm
Richard Hoggart Building 308

Response: Svenja Bromberg (Goldsmiths)

“We, women”, what do we want? The expression designates two things. On the one hand, the Lacanian “not-all” of feminine jouissance, which answers to the old Freudian question “what does the woman want?”, on the other, “We, women” as one of the instances of universal equality conceptualized by Jacques Rancière. The question pursued in this talk is the following: how does feminine jouissance alter the concept of the “miscount” of equality, how does it bring to the fore the unresolvable problem of the numerical element itself? What is as stake is not just the non-relation of equality to the inequality that does it wrong, its miscount. What is at stake is a non-relation within equality itself, which designates the equality between men and women (a two without one), that can never enter into any count at all. This equality, though not “countable”, materialized in Algerian women’s specific involvement in the independence struggle.

Contact: a.toscano [at] gold.ac.uk