GSWS Graduate Research Colloquium ft. Lucila Rozas Urrunaga (Annenberg) and Thomas Henry "Hank" Owings (Political Science)

Thomas Henry "Hank" OwingsBetween Freedom and Desire: Toward a Democratic Ethos in Sex

Discussions around the monkeypox pandemic and LGBTQ susceptibility instigated debate around whether or not it’s “homophobic” for public health officials to call for sexual restraint. In this paper, I argue that this debate is part of an ongoing tension within queer and feminist theory between those who advocate for a libertarian sexual ethic – that freedom to pursue sex without constraints is liberatory – and those who propose that sexuality needs social constraints. Drawing on second-wave feminism and recent discussions within feminism around consent, I argue that democratic concerns are valid appeals by which to constrain sex and are not reducible to conservative, anti-sex positions. I thus argue against the libertarian ethic of sex in segments of queer theory (especially gay male theory) that posit free sexuality as a good in itself. 
 

Lucila Rozas Urrunaga
"Grief, desire, reparation: the production of the feminist affect and the feministsubjectivity in Maria Pía López’s 'Not One Less'"Collective mourning set the starting point of a new feminist tide represented by the NiUna Menos (Not One Less) movement, which initiated a series of actions to protestagainst the systematic and cruel killings of women in Argentina. The tide has been growingever since, refusing territorial and political boundaries, and expanding its influencethroughout Latin America and worldwide. While the rising of the tide has not yetconcluded, Maria Pía López, activist, and chronicler of the movement has intended toprovide an open, first-person account of Ni Una Menos in her manifesto Not One Less:Mourning, Disobedience, and Desire. I intend to analyze this document as an affectiveobject that is both representation and performance in itself. As a representation, I focuson the repertoire of people, places, actions, and feelings that she associates with themovement to provide a glimpse of the emotional habitus that influences feminist politicalaction. As a performance, I focus on the way this representation aims to generate thepotential for the re-emergence of feminist affect and the assembling of an ever-expansivefeminist subjectivity and practice that animates political struggle. I argue that the idea ofthe brown commons, as delineated by José Esteban Muñoz, allows an understanding offeminist subjectivity as assembled from the transmission of the sense of fragility and therelated feelings that emerge when feminized bodies, places, and objects touch. Finally, Iconclude that the manifesto engages in a reparative reading, acknowledging, and aspiringto capture the desire for mutual touching that takes place during demonstrations. As such,it intends to open the space for the proliferation, amplification, and futurity of thisfeminist tide and its political subjects.