Political Theory

H21 - Sex, Embodiment, Identity

Date: Jun 1 | Time: 03:15pm to 04:45pm | Location: Classroom - CL 410 Room ID:15739

Chair/Président/Présidente : Alex Wellington (Ryerson University)

Resistant Bodies and Freedom: Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel on the Problem of Sex for Autonomy and Citizenship: Joshua Goldstein (University of Calgary)
Abstract: The question of how the order and organization of our sexuate bodies ought to fit within the order and organization of our lives as full, political citizens is, of course, as old as Plato and Aristotle. While the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment tradition abandons the ancient naturalism that underpinned the Platonic and Aristotelian problem of the place of sex within human fulfilment, its new concern for autonomy has not been able to escape the question of the place of the sexuate body. Kant expresses the three-fold nature of the problem—one that bedevils Rousseau and Hegel too—when he notes that “[o]ur bodies belong to ourselves, and are subject to the general laws of freedom” (27:378). First, despite the attempt to move beyond ancient naturalism, the body is inalienably a condition of the actualization of an autonomy that has its bearings essentially in the meta-physical will. Second, the body ought to be bound by and become ethical only through its integration into the demands of freedom. Yet, and third, for Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel the particularly sexuate body nonetheless resists the demands of freedom. In this paper, by tracing through these three steps, I argue, that we can make sense of the of the boundaries for the ethical accommodation and integration of the sexuate body within the autonomous life of the individual and the life lived as a citizen.

Rethinking Embodied Action: A Critique of Vital Materialism: Elaine Stavro (Trent University)
Abstract: Recent interest in objects, affects, matter and the non-human world has involved an ontological project of disclosing presocial autonomous forces of materiality. In doing so, vital materialists and speculative realists have reproduced a universalism, a view from nowhere, which diminishes the significance of human agency (seeing worms, gun residue and humans on the same level) as well as eschews thinking of human differences in power and location. I will rely upon the problematic of embodied agency of Simone de Beauvoir as well as embodied performativity of Judith Butler, to correct this shortcoming. This approach to the aesethetics and the non-cognitive domain of life, has more of a potential for developing democratic sensibilities and furthering democratic practices.

(De)pathologizing Discourse: Mapping the Problematization of Gender Dysphoria in Ontario: Sarah Smith (University of Ottawa)
Abstract: What counts as an illness? Who gets to decide? These questions are at the forefront of the relationship between the transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) community and the psychiatric industry. The need for access to gender-confirming medical services is complicated by an increasing amount of activism that refuses the pathologization of gender dysphoria by the American Psychiatric Association. Many TGNC activists have mobilized concepts from critical disability and mad studies, namely the medical and social models of mental illness, to describe their aversion to the pathologization of their identities. However, some TGNC people have cited problems with a complete rejection of biomedicine, as gender dysphoria as a diagnosis legitimates insurance coverage for gender-confirming medical procedures. Evidently, this binary relationship between the medical and the social is problematic as it assumes a uniform experience of TGNC subjects, which is not reflected in Ontario policies and practices surrounding gender dysphoria. Therefore, this thesis seeks to trouble the binary relationship between the medical and social by analyzing how gender dysphoria is framed in mental health policies and practices in Ontario. Using critical discourse analysis, Bacchi’s WPR model, and Foucault’s biopower, this thesis reveals a more fluid approach to conceptualizing TGNC mental health policy discourse and, more broadly, models of conceptualizing mental illness from a theoretical perspective. Examining the intersection of mental health and TGNC studies, this thesis builds on existing public policy literature by framing these issues as legitimate policy problems, and adding the perspective of Mad analyses to political science.