"Signifying power relations". Gender studies, intersectionality and anti-gender campaigns

Session moderated by François Héran.
Each 30 minutepresentationis followed by 10 minutes of discussion.

Abstract

In 1986, feminist historian Joan W. Scott proposed a two-part definition of the concept of genderthat is still relevant today : on the one hand, " gender is a constitutive element of social relations based on perceived differences between the sexes ", and on the other, " gender is a primary way of signifying power relations. "While, since 2010, anti-gender campaigns in many countries have targeted the first proposition, reduced to a simple opposition between nature and culture, it is the second that informs most of the work carried out in this field of research. Gender studies is not just a particular field, dealing with gender and sexuality ; it offers a tool for apprehending all kinds of social phenomena by analyzing the way societies talk at the same time about class and race, as the intersectional approach shows, but also about religion and secularism, national identity and international relations - in short, about power. In this way, they even enable us to analyze anti-gender campaigns. Gender is a privileged political language in which democratic and anti-democratic logics clash .