News

New publication

I am delighted to announce the publication of an open-access anthology, which I have edited together with Melcher Ruhkopf.

Post-Familial Politics. (Re)productive Spaces and Modes of Relating
Liza Mattutat / Melcher Ruhkopf (Eds.)
»Abolition of the family!« This controversial proposal by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels has recently been revived by feminist writers, who analyze the family as a key institution of privatized social reproduction and discuss alternatives to this system. Building on these analyses, the volume’s contributors explore the connections between space, the economy, and care. They respond from an interdisciplinary perspective to a twofold question: How are reproductive regimes shaped by space, and vice versa? And how can interventions at the level of space – whether literal architecture, everyday spatial practices, or imagined spaces in art and literature – help reform, revolutionize or abolish these regimes and enable other forms of relating?

The book is available to download here.

We welcome enquiries of all kinds, such as requests for book presentations, talks, interviews or reviews. Please get in touch!

New research project

My research project, “Utopia(n) Matters: Feminist Utopias and the Transformation of the Social Imaginary of Gender”, has been approved for funding by the Volkswagen Foundation. I am thrilled by this news and am looking forward to spending the next three years investigating the material dimensions of feminist utopias, the histories of their emergence, and their social and political effects.

Case studies include: Magnus Hirschfeld’s theory of sexual intermediaries; Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland trilogy; and Alice Constance Austin’s kitchenless city. Cornelius Castoriadis’s concept of the social imaginary will provide the philosophical framework.

More information on this project will follow soon.

Latest event

I led a roundtable discussion on the topic “The Limits of Consent: Moral and Social-Philosophical Perspectives on Sex” at the Conference on Practical Philosophy in Passau.

The panelists were Milena Bartholain (Goethe University Frankfurt), Hanno Hinrichs (University of Oldenburg), Susanne Hinrichs (University of Münster) and my co-organizer Peter Wiersbinski (University of Regensburg), who stepped in for Leonie Buning (University of Oldenburg), who had to withdraw due to illness. Funding was generously provided by the Society of Women* in Philosophy (SW*IP) and the German Society for Philosophy (DGPhil).

Inspired by this event, I am currently writing an article on sexual ethics. In it, I argue that different ethical concepts emerge depending on the sexuality model adopted. I suggest taking a psychoanalytically informed concept of sexuality as a starting point, one that considers aggression and objectification to be integral to sexuality.

Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss a draft!