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Rosi Braidotti’s Nomadic Subjects

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The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies

Abstract

Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory is Rosi Braidotti’s notorious foundation of her feminist psychosocial bridge that takes us from critique to creativity, as I will argue in this chapter. Written in the early 1990s, the book builds theoretical alliances and opens dialogue across feminist theory and movements, holding onto the transformative spaces of inventiveness of feminist praxis, beyond the constrictions of the life of “phallogocentric” power.

Subjectivity, ontology, sexual difference, and Women’s studies (rather than the more contemporary term Gender Studies) are philosophical and political concepts weaved through the tome; themes that up to this day characterize Braidotti’s contribution to feminist philosophy and resonate closely with the broader field of Psychosocial Studies. The proposal of the book, or Braidotti’s figuration, is that of the “nomadic subject,” or a subject that is embodied, inscribed in history and yet connected and relational and carved beyond an idea of a subject that is anchored in identification. Psychoanalysis, in its potencies and shortcomings, features widely in her argument, which demonstrates her process of thinking-with, rather than against, feminist thought both from European (mostly French, Italian, and German-inspired) and Anglophone traditions. Expanding on “difference” as a plural, affirmative, and nuanced category of Psychosocial thinking, Nomadic Subjects offers a solid and intimate ground for Braidotti’s work over the last three decades and her contributions to research and practice in our field. In this chapter, we will explore central elements of her work whilst addressing the resistances to “nomadic” thinking by contemporary psychoanalytic feminist scholars.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While in this period of her writing Braidotti was a pioneer of European feminist thought, in her more recent work, a consistent and in-depth dialogue with non-Western, Decolonial and Indigenous thought is central to her argument of both Nomadic thinking and the Posthuman. See: Part 3 “Nomadic Citizenship” of Nomadic Theory (Braidotti, 2011b) and Chapter 3 Decentring Anthropos: Ecofeminism Revisited in Posthuman Feminism (Braidotti, 2022).

  2. 2.

    In the second edition of Nomadic Subjects, Braidotti includes a whole concluding chapter where she is interviewed by Andrja Sevic about the question of gender, sexuality, sexual identity, and her focus on sexual difference instead. There she explains that one difference between her approach and that of queer theory is that she does not consider heteronormativity as “the” matrix of power alone; since power is not centralised. Braidotti responds: “It is absolutely true that my nomadic subject is very compatible with queering practices, so long as we agree on the terms and the structure of the exercise. Sexuality for me is not linguistically mediated, but rather an embodied practice of experimentation with multiple relations in an affirmative manner. I have devoted a large amount of my book Metamorphoses to a critique of queer theory in Butler’s work, and she responded in Undoing Gender. This has often led to some sort of polarization among younger theorists, as if one felt compelled to choose either/or. Neither of us agrees with easy polarizations, but we do work with different paradigms” (Braidotti, 2011a, p. 290).

  3. 3.

    Preciado does not draw directly on Braidotti in this published speech, despite being also influenced by Deleuze and Guattari and of making similar criticisms to the psychoanalytic Oedipal ideology. However, Preciado is referenced by Braidotti (2022) in her more recent work.

  4. 4.

    Elisabeth Roudinesco, the grand historian of French psychoanalysis and biographer of Lacan, called the book “unconvincing” in her review for the French newspaper Le Monde. The title and subtitle of her article read: “Le philosophe trans s’appuie sur son expÉrience pour appeler à « dÉcoloniser » l’inconscient. Sans convaincre.”(Roudinesco, 2020).

  5. 5.

    Julia Kristeva, another important thinker of French Feminism, argues that in patriarchy to access subjectivity, a separation from the mother’s body is made necessary, resulting in a type of melancholia (Kristeva, 1980, 1987).

  6. 6.

    Bracha Ettinger, a contemporary feminist psychoanalyst also subscribes to the idea of symbolic gestation as the ground for a feminine ethics of togetherness and co-poiesis which more recently (2019) she has tried to de-essentialise. See: Ettinger, 2005, 2006 and 2019.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Arts London, London, UK

    Ana Carolina Minozzo

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  1. Ana Carolina Minozzo
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Correspondence to Ana Carolina Minozzo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK

    Stephen Frosh

  2. Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

    Marita Vyrgioti

  3. Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

    Julie Walsh

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK

    Stephen Frosh

  2. Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, London, UK

    Marita Vyrgioti

  3. Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, London, UK

    Julie Walsh

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Minozzo, A.C. (2022). Rosi Braidotti’s Nomadic Subjects. In: Frosh, S., Vyrgioti, M., Walsh, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61510-9_49-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61510-9_49-1

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