USB Journals (Univ. Köln)
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\u27Adult Games\u27 - Gender Subversion in Miranda July\u27s The First Bad Man
No full textThis paper investigates points of contact between postmodernist / poststructuralist and feminist currents by analysing the deconstruction of stable gendered identities and the depiction of both femininity and masculinity in the performance artist Miranda July’s novel The first bad man (2015). Although there has been doubt about a productive interplay of postmodernism and feminism, it can be shown that the playfulness inherent in postmodern discourses might support feminism’s political agenda, namely by opening up the category of ‘woman’ to include participants who had been excluded from the framework of feminist identity politics before. The subversion of gender categories is achieved through performative acts (as described in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble), namely the simulations or ‘adult games’ that the main characters Clee and Cheryl employ (for example re-enactments of old self-defence video tapes), and through the repeated parody of gendered norms inherent in the novel. While the heterosexual matrix is thus foregrounded, different forms of sexuality are played out against each other and the notion of a natural gender, as well as a specifically female sexuality, is called into question. Queer studies – with Judith Butler as their representative – provide a useful focus for the post-feminist agenda applied here (post-feminist not in the sense of a backlash, but as a new and productive approach to feminism and its objectives), and Linda Hutcheon’s ideas about a form of complicitous critique further exemplify the link to postmodernist theory. That subversion and destabilisation can only occur within their respective frameworks and that every deconstruction involves contradictoriness is made explicit throughout the paper and a possible escape from binary logic is proposed. The aim is to explore in how far postmodernism and feminism share certain objectives and, through their subversion of fixed identities and meanings, can create a productive intersection
Review: Burn It Down! Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution, edited by Breanne Fahs
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
Manifestos clarify antagonisms; they articulate points of conflict by exposing opposing forces. Manifestos of feminism – the practice, theory, and movement opposed to patriarchy – reveal the roots of patriarchy and the ways this very long crisis occludes equality. Burn it Down! Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution, edited by Breanne Fahs, accomplishes this by encouraging us to focus our attention beyond the mechanisms of representation and negotiation, and toward the political itself: the dynamics of social power. The arguments here range from the specific to the systemic, representing feminism’s diversity and confirming feminism’s crucial role in all struggles for social justice
Der Meister der Tränen und der Eingeweide: Semiotiken der Selbstauflösung
No full textDiese Arbeit ist aus der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Kontrafaktischen in der sprachwissenschaftlichen Forschung heraus entstanden: was wäre, wenn die Vorstellungen, die unsere Vorfahren (und die anderer Leute) hinsichtlich sprachlicher Praktiken pflegten, erinnert und beachtet würden? Was wäre, wenn die Perspektiven auf Kommunikation derjenigen Menschen, deren Spuren als Graffiti an Pilgerstätten und den Mauern alter Gebäude überdauern, ernstgenommen und nicht in Vergessenheit geraten wären? Dann würden wir vielleicht besser verstehen, dass es bei alldem – Sprache, Zeichen, Klang – auch immer um Erfahrung und Verwandlung geht und nicht nur um das Übermitteln von Botschaften. Das ist im Grunde nichts neues, aber der Versuch, Spuren dahingehend zu verfolgen, dass Auskunft über Sprache und Zeichen als Teil von Selbstauflösung – infolge von Pilgerschaft und Transformation – erhalten wird, ist es schon. Und so finden sich in den drei hier versammelten Texten ein Bericht über das Ausgilben aus dem akzelerierten Leben hinaus, eine Studie über das Schaben von heiligem Staub, der in enger Beziehung mit dem Klang von Gebet und Gesang steht und der aus sich aus einem Caritasgedanken heraus auflösenden Gemäuern kommt, und eine Untersuchung der Figur des Säulenfressers, der aus dem Inneren heraus Ordnung und Halt infrage stellt und uns daran erinnern mag, dass wir und unsere Gebäude am Ende wieder Gebrösel und Sediment sind
Shifting social norms as a driving force for linguistic change: Struggles about language and gender in the German Bundestag
No full textThis paper focuses on language change based on shifting social norms, in particular with regard to the debate on language and gender. It is a recurring argument in this debate that language develops naturally and that severe interventions – such as gender-inclusive language is often claimed to be – are inappropriate and even dangerous. Such ‘interventions’ are, however, not unprecedented. Socially motivated processes of language change are neither unusual nor new. We focus on one important socio-political space in Germany, the German Bundestag. Taking other struggles about language, gender, and sexuality in the plenaries of the Bundestag as a starting point, our article illustrates that language and gender has been a recurring issue in the German Bundestag since the 1980s. We demonstrate how this is reflected in linguistic practices of the Bundestag, regarding a) the use of self-chosen desig- nations for gays and lesbians; b) naming practices for women in political positions; and c) more gender-inclusive legal language. Lastly, we discuss implications of these earlier language battles for the currently very heated debate about gender-inclusive language, especially regarding new forms with gender symbols like the asterisk or the colon (Lehrer*innen, Lehrer:innen ‘male*female teachers’) which are intended to encompass all gender identities
Neural machine translation and a queer perspective on gender bias: A qualitative study of how different strategies of écriture inclusive are translated into German by DeepL and Google Translate
No full textThe issue of gender in translation has garnered significant attention since the establishment of (human aided) machine translation as previously existing gender biases in natural language are now being reproduced by translation machines. Although machine translation has a long history, recent advancements, such as neural machine translation (NMT), have revolutionized the field. NMT systems rely on training algorithms and large corpora which are influenced by human choices that can be negatively biased regarding gender, race, etc. In the context of written French, écriture inclusive strategies seek to establish gender-inclusive alternatives to promote gender equality in language use. However, the debate on gender and inclusive language still predominantly focuses on binary gender representations. This study explores how Google Translate and DeepL handle écriture inclusive strategies when they are translated into German. Three main aspects will be directly addressed in this section. First, we will take a look at the common translation practices offered by the machines regarding sentences in écriture inclusive; second, we will examine the target term strategies that differ from the source language’s; and third, we will examine the instances where translations incorporate genders beyond the binary. We therefore aim to investigate how machine translation systems, specifically Google Translate and DeepL, perform in these cases. In this article, we argue that the absence of ethical frameworks for AI and data training has resulted in the reinforcement of gender biases and representational harms within machine translation systems
Simplemente te casas con un alemán y ya tienes tu residencia: Verbal violence, interactive positioning, and the stereotype of the opportunistic marriage migrant in Latin American migration contexts in Germany
No full textThis contribution focuses on the role of gender stereotypes in the emergence of verbal violence. Drawing upon selected examples from the VIOLIN corpus, a collection of narratives of problematic communicative encounters by Latin American migrants residing in Germany, we apply a combination of Narrative Analysis and Positioning Theory in order to elucidate how the perception of verbal violence can emerge from a sense of being unfairly positioned by members of the mainstream society. For this purpose, we use the stereotype of the “opportunistic female marriage migrant” as a case example. This widespread stereotype, prevalent in both German and many Latin American societies, suggests that women from economically-disadvantaged countries take advantage of their German husbands to secure residency and a better life. As emerges from our analysis, Latin American women often find themselves being positioned as “opportunistic marriage migrants”, but vehemently reject such positioning in their narratives. However, they still tend to reassert and perpetuate the stereotype by using it as a foil to construct their own positions as honest, well-educated and independent, and thus as members of a distinct, and morally superior, category of migrant women in Germany
Renewable Landscapes: Impulses for an Energy Transition-Related Transformation in Schleswig-Holstein
No full textDer Beitrag beleuchtet zentrale gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen auf dem Weg zur Klimaneutralität und untersucht, wie gut die Hochschullandschaft in Schleswig-Holstein diesbezüglich aufgestellt ist. Im Fokus steht der breite Begriff der energiewendebezogenen Transformation, der eine umfassende Betrachtung von Prozessen, Konflikten und deren gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen ermöglicht. So sind in Schleswig-Holstein einerseits deutliche Fortschritte beim Ausbau der erneuerbaren Energien erkennbar; zugleich nehmen Konflikte um Flächenkonkurrenzen, die Verteilung von Las-ten und Nutzen sowie die Ressourcennutzung zu. Diese Konflikte lassen sich nicht al-lein durch eine technisch-ökonomische Betrachtung lösen, sondern erfordern sektorübergreifende Lösungsansätze. Der Beitrag identifiziert dazu vier zentrale Handlungsfelder: Neben Energieerzeugung und Verbrauch werden mit Boden und Suffizienz zwei oft vernachlässigte, aber zentrale Aspekte in den Fokus gerückt. Diese verdeutlichen sowohl die Notwendigkeit nachhaltiger Flächennutzung als auch die Bedeutung von (kollektiven) Verhaltensänderungen und sozialer Innovation für das Gelingen der Energiewende. Der Beitrag zielt darauf ab, zentrale Handlungsfelder der energiewendebezogenen Transformation in Schleswig-Holstein zu benennen und Vorschläge für ein inter- und transdisziplinäres Forschungsprogramm zu entwickeln. Dabei wird eine stärkere gesellschaftliche Perspektive eingefordert, die soziale und ökologische Erfordernisse in ihrer Wechselwirkung in den Mittelpunkt rückt. Der Beitrag versteht sich als Impuls für Politik, Praxis und Wissenschaft, gemeinsam die Voraussetzungen für zukunftsfähige Entwicklungspfade in Schleswig-Holstein zu schaffen.The article highlights key societal challenges on the way to climate neutrality and analyses how well the higher education landscape in Schleswig-Holstein is positioned in this regard. The focus is on the broad concept of energy transition-related transformation, which enables a comprehensive consideration of processes, conflicts and their social effects. On one hand, significant progress can be seen in the expansion of renewable energies in Schleswig-Holstein; at the same time, conflicts over competition for land, the distribution of burdens and benefits and the use of resources are increasing. These conflicts cannot be resolved by technical and economic considerations alone, but require cross-sectoral solutions. The article identifies four central fields of action: In addition to energy production and consumption, two often neglected but central aspects, soil and sufficiency, are brought into focus. These highlight both the need for sustainable land use and the importance of (collective) behavioural changes and social innovation for the success of the energy transition. The aim of this article is to identify key fields of action for the energy transition in Schleswig-Holstein and to develop proposals for an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research programme. It calls for a stronger societal perspective that focuses on the interaction between social and ecological requirements. The article is intended as an impulse for politics, practice and science to jointly create the conditions for sustainable development paths in Schleswig-Holstein
Hydrogen and resistance: energy transition, indigenous rights and green colonialism in La Guajira, Colombia: (04/2025)
No full textDiese Bachelorarbeit untersucht die sozialen und politischen Konflikte rund um die Förderung von grünem Wasserstoff in der kolumbianischen Region La Guajira – insbesondere im Kontext indigener Rechte und postkolonialer Machtverhältnisse. Im Zentrum steht das Windkraftprojekt „Windpeshi“, das als Grundlage für die Wasserstoffproduktion dient und tief in das Territorium des indigenen Volkes der Wayúu eingreift. Anhand eines interdisziplinären Analyseansatzes, der postentwicklungs-theoretische Perspektiven mit dem Konzept der Wasserstoffgerechtigkeit und einem infrastrukturellen Verständnis von Macht verknüpft, werden Muster von (Un)Gerechtigkeit sichtbar gemacht. Die Arbeit basiert auf qualitativer Sekundärforschung, Dokumentenanalysen und einer kritischen Betrachtung öffentlicher Diskurse. Die Analyse zeigt, dass die sogenannte grüne Energiewende im globalen Süden nicht zwangsläufig zu sozialer Gerechtigkeit führt, sondern unter bestimmten Bedingungen koloniale Abhängigkeiten, soziale Spaltungen und Umweltkonflikte verstärken kann. Damit leistet die Arbeit einen Beitrag zur kritischen Reflexion transnationaler Klima- und Energiepolitik sowie zu Fragen indigener Selbstbestimmung im Kontext globaler Transformationsprozesse.This bachelor’s thesis examines the social and political conflicts surrounding the promotion of green hydrogen in Colombia’s La Guajira region – particularly in the context of indigenous rights and postcolonial power structures. At the center is the Windpeshi wind power project, designed to enable hydrogen production while deeply encroaching upon the territory of the Wayúu people. Using an interdisciplinary analytical framework that integrates post-development theory, the concept of hydrogen justice, and an infrastructural approach to power, the study reveals emerging patterns of (in)justice. The research is based on qualitative secondary sources, document analysis, and critical discourse review. The findings show that the so-called green energy transition in the Global South does not inherently lead to social justice. On the contrary, under certain conditions, it can reproduce colonial dependencies, deepen social divides, and intensify environmental conflict. This thesis contributes to a critical reflection on transnational climate and energy policy, as well as the struggle for indigenous self-determination amid global transformation processes
Review: Martina Tißberger, Gabriele Dietze, Daniela Hrzán, and Jana Husmann- Kastein, eds.: Weiß - Weißsein – Whiteness: Kritische Studien zu Gender und Rassismus: Critical Studies on Gender and Racism.
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
This much-needed collection of German- and English-language essays on Critical Whiteness Studies combines different disciplinary and thematic approaches to the topic and explores this relatively new field in German academia. The articles - all of them well-structured and of readable length - interrogate a number of important (political) questions: What are the blind spots of German feminism when confronted with its own hegemonic position? Can Critical Whiteness Studies serve as a tool to approach the structural racisms that so are so easily neglected when racism is time and again only equated with right wing extremism and Neo-Nazi brutality? And how can we clarify the fact that race is not something that applies only to racially and ethnically marked people, but has a lot to do with Whiteness and Occidentalism