Discussion

When Spinoza famously posed the question ‘what can a body do?’, he (re-)introduced the body into philosophy and associated the body with power. This marked the beginning of a long tradition in which the body is treated as a proper object of philosophy, but only insofar as its (virile) effects on the world are concerned. The result is a mistrust of the vulnerable body, which is suspected of being brute, necessitated matter and is characterized by the absence of all form, of all power. When philosophers address it, they usually do so in order to ‘save’ it by highlighting its hidden, forgotten powers. How can one get out of this impasse and think of a body without starting from the question of how effective its hold is on the world? Estelle Ferrarese will try to answer this question by reflecting on the phenomenon of sobbing.

Estelle Ferrarese is Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at Picardie-Jules-Verne University in France. She is Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She has been Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research in New York and a Humboldt Research Fellow at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, as well as a research fellow at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin. She is the author of several monographs: Le Marché de la Vertu (2023); Vulnerability and Critical Theory (2018), Adorno and the Fragility of Caring for Others (2020); Ethique et politique de l’espace public. Habermas et la discussion (2015). She has also published numerous articles on Critical Theory, forms of life, and vulnerability as a political category.

Vulnerability has emerged as a crucial term to describe the human condition, especially in light of the pandemic. Its etymology can be traced back to the Latin term ‘vulnus’, which denoted both a ‘generic wound’ and the ‘infringement of a right’. This semantic ambiguity still persists in current interpretations of vulnerability, with some understanding it as an ontological concept (namely vulnerability as a shared human condition) and others as a political and legal category that identifies specific groups or individuals who are exposed to discrimination. While the universalistic account of the notion fails to bear witness to the unequal distribution of precarity as it affects certain lives, the particularistic approach risks reproducing and even fostering the isolation and marginality of groups and individuals identified as needing protection. In this latter approach, one fails to account both for the agency of such subjects and groups as they resist those conditions and for the systematic and structural connotations of certain forms of violence.

However, many feminist theorizations claim that vulnerability, in its embodied and relational connotation, is still a helpful tool for mapping the present since it allows one to grasp how forms of resistance emerge. Taking this perspective entails many critical questions:

What would it mean to understand vulnerability as a situated condition linked to relationality and interdependency, rather than as a state that pertains to certain subjects? How should politics, institutions, and law take care of vulnerable lives? Can vulnerability be theorized, politicized, and ‘juridified’ in a manner that takes into consideration the diverse and plural ways in which everyone is exposed to it? In what senses does this concept necessitate an understanding that is derived from situated knowledge, such that the concept does not remain a theoretical abstraction? In order to address such urgent issues, this symposium aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue between feminist and gender studies, political philosophy, post- and decolonial studies, critical theory, legal studies, and social sciences.