MMB Reading Group – Rosi Braidotti

This month the MMB Reading Group are meeting to discuss Rosi Braidotti’s work on the nomadic subject, Braidotti, R., 2014. Writing as a nomadic subject. Comparative Critical Studies, 11(2-3), pp.163-18 and Braidotti, R., 2013. Metamorphoses: Towards a materialist theory of becoming. John Wiley & Sons. The discussion will be led by Tom Allport, Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer in the Bristol Medical School.

To join the meeting and receive the Zoom link, please sign up here. 

Abstract for ‘Writing as a nomadic subject’:

‘My lifelong engagement in the project of nomadic subjectivity has been partly motivated by the conviction that, in these globalized times of accelerating technologically mediated changes, many traditional points of reference and age-old habits of thought are being re-composed, albeit in contradictory ways. Paradoxically, old power relations are not only confirmed but in many ways exacerbated in the new geo-political context.2 At such a time more conceptual creativity is necessary, and more theoretical courage is needed in order to bring about the leap across inertia, nostalgia, aporia and the other forms of critical stasis induced by our historical condition. It has become like a mantra to me: we need to learn to think differently about the kind of subjects we have already become and the processes of deep-seated transformation we are undergoing. The philosopher in me believes that a new alliance between philosophy, the arts and science is a crucial building block for this qualitative shift of perspective.3 The writer in me, on the other hand, continues to muse about the complex ways in which the imaginary both propels and resists in-depth transformations.’

Further information on Metamorphoses:

‘The discussions about the ethical, political and human implications of the postmodernist condition have been raging for longer than most of us care to remember. They have been especially fierce within feminism. After a brief flirtation with postmodern thinking in the 1980s, mainstream feminist circles seem to have turned their back on the staple notions of poststructuralist philosophy. Metamorphoses takes stock of the situation and attempts to reset priorities within the poststructuralist feminist agenda. Cross-referring in a creative way to Deleuze’s and Irigaray’s respective philosophies of difference, the book addresses key notions such as embodiment, immanence, sexual difference, nomadism and the materiality of the subject. Metamorphoses also focuses on the implications of these theories for cultural criticism and a redefinition of politics. It provides a vivid overview of contemporary culture, with special emphasis on technology, the monstrous imaginary and the recurrent obsession with ‘the flesh’ in the age of techno-bodies’ (Wiley & Sons).