Politics of Vulnerability in Contemporary Women’s Writing and Creative Practices

Centre for Contemporary Women’s Writing Online Conference

Organisers: Sandra Daroczi (University of Bath);  Adina Stroia (Newcastle University)

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Questions of vulnerability abound in current women-centric literary, cultural, and social discourse focussing on a broad spectrum of areas including the body, affects and emotions, sexuality, and health. Within a current political and critical climate which invites us and even insists on us revealing and working through our vulnerabilities, this conference wishes to interrogate the effects that a continuous and persistent self-excavation has on modes of being and on cultural production in the contemporary era. Following on from developments such as the contemporary memoir boom, the increased popularity of the personal essay, or the interest in body-based performance art, this conference takes a two-pronged approach: we are not only interested in exploring notions of vulnerability, but we are also seeking to interrogate the potentially nefarious logic as well as damaging discourses subtending a politics of vulnerability. We are thus asking a series of structuring questions, chief among them: How do you preserve a self that is continuously on display as being vulnerable? Can the display of vulnerability through artistic creation become a political force? When does vulnerability lean into performance? Is female-centric cultural production at risk of using and abusing notions of vulnerability?

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