Research at the CGI
Research and teaching at the CGI is situated in the tradition of feminist-intersectional social theory. Such a socio-theoretical perspective and analysis offers a bridge between materialist and post-structuralist theories and enables us to look at society as a whole and as it has become. In addition to social structures and state and political institutions, discourses, knowledge, norms, bodies and modes of subjectivation are also considered. For such an understanding of gender studies, a multidimensional and intersectional understanding of gender is indispensable: Gender is therefore understood as inextricably interwoven with race, (post)colonialism, class, sexuality, and dis_ability.
We examine the dimensionality and interconnectedness of inequality relations on two levels that are intertwined:
- As vectors of social inequality in their subjectivizing effects with (effects) on the individual and psychosocial level (e.g. In connection with educational processes);
- As structural categories constituting state, politics, democracy and capitalism.
We are concerned with the intertwining of structural categories and subjectivizations, for example in political conflicts of collective actors and social movements. Furthermore, we are concerned with contemporary historical contextualizations of the present: thus, we understand gender itself as a construct that emerged in the context of colonialism and the transatlantic enslavement trade, just as we analyze the current multiple crises as a result of gendered-heteronormative, postcolonial and racialized capitalism.
The CGI stands for an intersectional critical gender studies that seeks to bring tools from feminist theory, queer studies, trans* studies, de- and anti-colonial theories, Black studies, and critical theory into productive dialogues.
From both historical and contemporary perspectives, we work on the following themes:
- Power and Domination
- Democracy and violence
- State and Hegemony
- Subjectification, othering and educational processes
- Body and norm(alization)
- Political economy and crises
- Care as exploitation and resistance
- Migration and un_belonging
- Knowledge productions and invisibilities