Global Feminism and undecidabilities

Beijing’ 95 and beyond

Authors

  • Tarsis Daylan Brito London School of Economics and Political Science

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.37.2

Keywords:

Beijing’ 95, deconstruction, global feminism, humanism, undecidability, universalism

Abstract

This paper engages with the philosophical underpinnings of the Beijing Conference on women’s rights that took place in 1995. Drawing on Derrida’s concept of undecidability – which becomes here both a method of analysis and a political strategy – it critiques the universalising aspects of Beijing’ 95’s. In so doing, it aims to provide a remodelled strategy for a feminist global politics, one that be able to maintain feminism on the undecidable terrain of the binaries ‘Woman/Man’, and ‘Woman/women’. This strategy, it is argued, allows the project to be at once open to difference/particularism and always prepared to universalise its aims, offering women the possibility of fighting as ‘humans or women’, and as a ‘universal woman or particular women’. Bearing this in mind, I try to show how Beijing’ 95 de-politicises the binaries I have referred to by ‘closing’ their undecidabilities, rendering any attempt to politically engage with them impossible a priori.

Author Biography

Tarsis Daylan Brito, London School of Economics and Political Science

Tarsis Daylan Brito, 23, from Brasília (Brazil), is currently a master’s student in ‘International Relations Theory’ at the London School of Economic and Political Science (LSE). In 2017, he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in ‘International Relations’ at the University of Brasilia. He wrote his dissertation on ‘Brexit and Derrida’s concept of Hospitality’ and is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Millennium – Journal of International Studies, located at the LSE, where he took part in the discussions regarding the acceptance or rejection of peer-reviewed manuscripts for the upcoming edition of the journal (Vol. 47, No. 1). His interests include International Relations Theory; Poststructuralism; Deconstruction; Gender Studies; Global Ethics; and the intersections between Philosophy and Political Science. 

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Published

2018-07-02

How to Cite

Brito, Tarsis Daylan. 2018. “Global Feminism and Undecidabilities: Beijing’ 95 and Beyond”. Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science 37 (July). Online:19-38. https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.37.2.

Issue

Section

Research articles