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During the 19th century, the expansion and consolidation of the phenomenon known as the Death of God calls into question not only the existence of the Christian god, but also the need for certain cultural parameters to be the way they are, backed by the indisputable divine word. Indeed, if there is no longer a divinity that ensures that the order of the world is necessary, it becomes understood as a contingent construct dependent on man.
This cultural relativism opens the door to a radical recoding of our existence, allowing that certain categories, such as that of woman, cease to be considered necessary and essential realities, to begin to be understood as contingent categories dependent on the social framework in which the individual is configured.
At this cultural crossroads, the heroines of Dostoevsky’s novels and the conceptual characters of Nietzsche’s essays show us how the sex-gender construct of the woman appears closely related to the “self-discourse” that women make about themselves based on their relationship with the other, that is, with the men. As the German philosopher says: “the man builds up an image of the woman, and the woman shapes herself according to this image.”
From the temperament of each woman —with her idiosyncratic tendencies, her socioeconomic condition, her biography…— in conjunction with the image that is expected from her, a series of performative roles of women will emerge that can be grouped into different typologies in which common traits are repeated. From the infernal woman or the holy fool in Dostoevsky’s work to the witch or the angel in Nietzsche’s books, in this introductory seminar we are going to attend some of the main typologies that we can find in their works.
After studying these typologies, the final objective is to contribute to the study of feminism with valuable reflections on the mechanism by which the construct of the woman is formed, so that women have the necessary tools for a successful social recoding in the direction that they want.
Speaker: Laura Rodríguez Frías (Nietzsche Seminar Coordinator at UCM, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Complutense University, Madrid)
Sponsors: Complutense University, Madrid (UCM); RCCHU