The Geschlecht Complex: Addressing Untranslatable Aspects of Gender, Genre, and Ontology

The polysemous German word "Geschlecht" exemplifies the most pertinent questions of the translational, transdisciplinary, transhistorical, and transnational structures of the contemporary humanities. Scholars contributing to The Geschlecht Complex examine these and other durable queries concerning the ontological powers of naming, in the light of recent artistic practices, theoretical innovations, and philosophical incitements. The volume presents "the Geschlecht complex" as a condition to become aware of and underwrite any interpretive endeavor.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 08 February 2024
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The polysemous German word "Geschlecht," which encompasses gender, genre, kind, kinship, species, race, and more, serves as a powerful illustration of the most pressing concerns within the translational, interdisciplinary, transhistorical, and transnational structures of the contemporary humanities. When texts, objects, practices, and concepts are transferred or displaced from one language, tradition, temporality, or form to another, what transpires? What is readily transposed, what resists relocation, and what emerges as distorted or new?

Drawing on Barbara Cassin's transformative remarks on untranslatability and the act of "philosophizing in languages," scholars contributing to The Geschlecht Complex delve into these enduring queries concerning the ontological powers of naming. They do so in the context of recent artistic practices, theoretical innovations, and philosophical incitements. The volume combines detailed case studies of concrete "category problems" in literature, philosophy, media, cinema, politics, painting, theatre, and the performing arts with a range of indispensable excerpts from canonical texts, featuring notable field-defining thinkers such as Apter, Cassin, Cavell, Derrida, Irigaray, Malabou, and Nancy, among others. By presenting "the Geschlecht complex" as a condition to become aware of and to companionably underwrite any interpretive endeavor, the volume offers a valuable mode for thinking and theorizing while situated in the urgent immediacy of pressing concerns and poised for the inevitable complexities of categorial naming and genre discernment that await in the often inscrutable, translation-resistant twenty-first century.

Historically grounded, yet attuned to the particularities of the present, the Geschlecht complex emerges as an invaluable tool for thinking and theorizing, while firmly entrenched in the urgent immediacy of pressing concerns. It remains poised for the inevitable complexities of categorial naming and genre discernment that lie ahead in the uncertain and translation-resistant twenty-first century.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 153 x 230 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501381966