In the workshop Revisiting Nomadic Subjects – 30 Years Later with philosopher Rosi Braidotti we discuss several chapters from two of her key publications: Posthuman feminism (2022) and Nomadic Subjects – Embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory (2011, originally published in 1994).

In her understanding of posthuman feminism, Braidotti works on a redefinition of materialism by stating a closer non-binary connection of Humanities and Life Sciences as well as Natural and Techno sciences. This transversal understanding highlights a shift from the body primacy to the “politic of the body” as interconnected, embodied, embedded, and intersectional. It also comprises ecologies of non-human and non-organic matter and is based on materialist, immanent and realist philosophies such as those by Spinoza, Margulis, Deleuze, Deleuze/Guattari, and indigenous approaches (i.e. Todd, Whyte, Viveiros Castro).

Braidotti’s thinking on nomadic subjects has been influencing discourses since the early 1990s. She introduces the practice of the “as if” by framing nomadic thinking as performative, affective, and as a movement in between languages. This includes processes of repeating, mimicking, and impersonating as a subversive way to open up other agential spaces. With Deleuze/Guattari’s nomadic epistemologies and Foucault’s concept of counter-memory, the nomadic in Braidotti’s philosophy encompasses critical feminist thought of the periphery (such as poverty and injustice) as well as the transit spaces and zones in-between. It also addresses the political as a way of acting on discursive and material aspects of the fractured and hegemonic-resistant subject. Her concept of ‘becoming nomad’ delineates a differentiated spatial and time-based process of ‘becoming subject’: a deconstructive and de-essentialist understanding and acknowledgement of difference from within.

Ort & Zeit: Bibliothek Erich Auerbach Institut (3. OG), Weyertal 59 (Rückgebäude), 50937 Köln | 28. Mai 2024, 10:00-16:00.