Femenine Avant-garde in the Activism between Centuries (19th and 20th): Influences in Women's Philosophy
This project aims to explore the links between transnational female activism, during the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century, and the thought of the women philosophers born in that period. The general objective is to illuminate relevant links between the social, political and artistic practices of self-organized women in activism networks, partly sedimented in public and private writings, with the renovating approaches that women philosophers present in their works regarding the conceptions of the human condition, the subjectivity and the relationship with otherness. Their theorizations move away from the postulates of the philosophical tradition in which those feminine figures are inscribed in a problematic way.
A double bet confers strength, novelty and uniqueness to the project: a combination of historical-genealogical inquiry and theoretical-critical interpretation and a distinctive choice of the object of study in each of the two temporal levels in which the research is articulated. In this sense, the project proposes:
- To study activist networks at a synchronic level: not only individual figures or only institutional associations, but the various forms of cooperation in which what we call “nodal figures” come together through different formal or informal organizations, supraorganizations, women’s institutions or events especially significant for the focal themes of the project: work, education, non-violence and social justice.
- To study at a diachronic level the possible crystallization in the thought of the philosophers of those experiences, ideas, concepts and questions that arose in the context of this activism.
Objectives
- From the opening of an innovative approach, to make a scientific contribution of excellence, and of theoretical-critical nature, to international studies both on women's philosophical production and on women's political history.
- Through transnational historical research and hermeneutic analysis, to produce results under the the form of publications, conferences and a digital platform showing: (1) the mapping of activist networks between centuries (2) the mapping of conceptual constellations projecting the debates of that time and (3) the forms of crystallization in the thought of women philosophers of the twentieth century.
- To consolidate our collaborations with national and international groups whose research deals with the axes of our investigation by means of research stays, scientific meetings organized by the project team, and the participation of its members in international congresses, seminars and colloquia.
- To give visibility to our results and encourage the rewriting and dissemination of the alternative narratives resulting from the project, that contribute in rethinking not only women history, but also the history of contemporary philosophy, the notion of the avant-garde and that of activism itself and that, therefore, can influence the transition towards an academic community and, in general, a society more aware of the valuable contributions of women to our practices and our theories.