Sonic patriarchy in a left‐wing French philosophy department

In: Feminist anthropology, Band 1, Heft 1, S. 56-70

Abstract

AbstractIt is a contradiction that patriarchal power and masculine violence continue to endure in academic spaces that are nominally dedicated to liberation and radical critique. How does a left‐wing patriarchy reproduce itself? I propose an exploratory ethnography of a patriarchal drama in France, focusing on administrative meetings in a university philosophy department. Drawing on Rebecca Lentjes' concept of sonic patriarchy, I propose that an established mode of patriarchal anarchism served to reproduce masculine radical subjects through a culture of aggressive noisemaking. These radical subjects were organized by the exclusion of two sorts of Others: women and conservative men, each excluded by specific sonic processes. The ensuing mode of reproduction was nevertheless unstable, threatened with neoliberal normalization and by internal critiques pointing towards a feminist materialism. When patriarchy becomes self‐dramatizing, dedramatization may become a meaningful political strategy.