Queer Love, Literature and Philosophy : On Reading The Argonauts

In this article, I suggest Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts challenges “epistemic habits” in contemporary critical thought on gender, politics, sexuality, intimacy, identity, and love. In particular, I focus on how Nelson through descriptions of queer life, love, and kinship articulates moral-existential and queer-philosophical perspectives on everyday life by bringing the “I-You” relationship to the fore of feminist and queer theoretical concerns. By reading Nelson with the philosophy of Wittgenstein, I discuss how love is related to views on language and what it means to say that one can have, as well as lack a faith in words, other people and linguistic meaning. The Argonauts, I argue, shows us the importance of acknowledging moral-existential perspectives of gender and identity and their role in I-You relations. The article raises questions of how to understand the relationship between theory, philosophy, and ordinary language in relation to cultural critique and criticism (Butler 1990; Sedgwick 2003). It also discusses love as a perspective one might take and have in life and to other people in general, not exclusively as romantic love, but as a philosophical perspective in thinking about gender, identity, politics, love, and intimacy.Peer reviewe

A Critique of Our Own? : On Intersectionality and “Epistemic Habits” in a Study of Racialization and Homonationalism in a Nordic Context

This article discusses how debates regarding intersectionality enable self-reflexitivity, positionality and critique, but also risk becoming routinized gestures in activist and academic settings. Through reflections on the notions of epistemic habits and epistemic whiteness, the article discusses key critiques of intersectional analysis, such as tendencies to re-centre whiteness, as a methodological concern. To illuminate the argument, I consider an example from a research project a colleague and I conducted on racialization and homonationalism in LGBTIQ activist work in a Finnish context, which brought up the question of whether our analysis reinforced or challenged whiteness. The aim of this article is to reflect on how intersectionality is a crucial concept for feminist knowledge production while also attending to and problematizing some presuppositions, that are routinely repeated as self-evident starting points in intersectionality research.Peer reviewe

Struggling with the Personal : On Epistemic Habits in Queer and Feminist Theory

Only the Swedish summary of the dissertation is published at Doria.Bara sammanfattningen på svenska publiceras i Doria.Vain ruotsinkielinen tiivistelmä julkaistaan Doriassa

Tule hyvä feminismi, älä tule paha feminismi - ajatuksia akateemisen feminismin episteemisistä tavoista

Non peer reviewe

Ethical Inquiries After Wittgenstein : Introduction

Peer reviewe

Introduction: Situatedness in queer concepts and history

Non peer reviewe