MEDUSA
- Main investigator:
- Enguix Grau, Begonya
- Area:
- Arts and Humanities
- Area of specialization:
- Network society, City and Community, Knowledge governance
- Affiliation center:
- Faculties
- UNESCO codes:
- 590505, 630201, 630202, 630707, 630703, 630703
- ODS:
- Gender relations
- Masculinity
- body
- affections
The MEDUSA - Genders in Transition: Masculinities, Affects, and Bodies research group is made up of researchers whose work focuses on genders, masculinities, affects and bodies. Its continued mission is to explore these fields and their intersections, and to critically analyse them from a non-essentialist, transitional perspective in line with feminist epistemologies.
We consider posthumanism to be a useful epistemological framework for exploring new conceptual, heuristic and analytical models that take into account non-representational theories and address the productive intersection between genders, affects and bodies, and the assemblages in which they are immersed. We aim to move the research forward by carrying out empirical studies that explore our core fields from fresh perspectives. We strive towards research that makes an impact, is committed to giving back to society and focuses on knowledge transfer. We adopt an interdisciplinary perspective encompassing anthropology, sociology, social psychology and philosophy.
Gender and masculinities
The study of masculinities emerged in the 1970s but is still a rarity in gender studies, which have primarily sought to account for and confront the absence of women in canons and to shed light on the intrinsic power relations within gender relations.
We take a comprehensive approach to analysing genders, one that considers affects, bodies and technoscience and puts the focus on masculinities, avoiding the oppositional paradigm of "new" and "old" masculinities.
Bodies and affects
Our bodies and everything that affects them (senses, emotions, ideologies, gender hierarchies and binarism, and technologies) are key parts of social action and not just supporting factors. They are central to the way we define and (re)present ourselves personally and socially. Our bodies are permeated by power relations that make and set the rules, affecting how we live in the world and our digital and non-digital relationships.
Gender and politics
In today's social context, technological and scientific developments affect body and gender expression, the emergence of affects and materialities, and power dynamics.
They challenge (and blur) the boundaries of the body, traditional gender concepts, and dualistic, binary and oppositional notions based on dichotomies (nature/culture, body/mind, man/woman, technology/virtuality). The exercise of politics affects our lives and shows that we are gendered beings in a neoliberal context. It positions us politically and socially.