At the Intersection of Freedom of Speech and Democracy: Truth and Lies in Twenty-First Century Political Discourse
My current research is focused on thesis which considers how we might utilise the Marxian concepts of nature and labour to develop feminist understandings of the body, sex, gender, and sexuality. In particular I aim to show that there is a strong connection, and potential, in connecting traditional Marxist accounts of nature and labour to feminist phenomenological studies of the body and sexual identities. This involves critical engagement with existing feminist literature on the topic especially pretraining to that of the works of Judith Butler and Simone Du Beauvoir in the pursuit of developing an account of the body that stresses the body as an inherently historical, dynamic, and dialectical entity whose shape and form is continually changing and shifting in tune with developing material contexts as well as to the developing needs of people. In doing so I necessarily critique concepts of sex that would see sex as a fundamentally material or “factual” concept especially as it relates to biologically reproductive determined modes of identity amongst humans, or the binary categorisation of people into “male” and “female”.
Primary Supervisor: Dr Suzanne Whitten
Secondary Supervisor: Dr Rebecca Bamford
