Author: Alice Nilsson
Nilsson, Alice, 2024 Paul B. Preciado and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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This thesis seeks to examine the work of Spanish philosopher Paul B. Preciado in relation to Continental philosophies of sexual difference. Philosophies of sexual difference and philosophies of gender have been the two main forms of analysis of sexual and gendered subjectivities within society and philosophy. While ‘gender’ is at present the most commonly utilised concept to analyse the way in which people are subjectified in regards to terms such as ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘male’, and ‘female’, the philosophies of sexual difference still hold important insights for us today, no matter what terms we choose to deploy. Speaking of sexual difference in relation to Preciado’s work, we can see ourselves in what at first seems to be a double bind. On the one hand, there is a plethora of work on sexual difference which refuses to restrict sexual difference to a binary and/or essential difference, but rather, understands sexual difference as multiple. A sexual difference which possibly could speak to the multiplicity of determinate being (past, present, and future) which does not do a violence to the being of subjects.Through closely reading Preciado alongside philosophers of sexual difference, we may be able to find the possibility of a fruitful dialogue between their works on what the future of subjectivity could be.
Keywords: Preciado, Sexual Difference, Philosophy of Gender, Feminist Philosophy, Irigaray, Grosz
Subject: Humanities thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2024
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Catherine Kevin