Thinking with Curiosity The Anthropology of Sexuality and Gender

In this inaugural lecture, Spronk proposes to use curiosity as a guiding method to uncover moral evaluations – both in the worlds we study and in our own theorizing as scientists. As Saba Mahood has argued for over twenty years, feminist analysis is based on normative and ethnocentric ideas that emerge from modern notions of subjectivity. The chair proposes to study sex, sexuality and gender more empirically and to investigate the traditional, but often apparent, oppositions between transgression and acceptance, and between the reproduction and rejection of norms and values. This will yield new decolonizing theoretical insights into power, subjectivity and agency.