Social Science Tribune

Introduction: Mapping Intersectional Gender Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Elena Tzelepis — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In memory of Eleni Varikas and her fighting spirit for a democratic global university

The “eternal irony” of literature: Attempted definitions of self-narration and inappropriate mixings

Aliki Theodosiou — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, I am interested in self-narration, the possibilities of defining it, and its relation to literature, arguing that these issues are indeed political. In examining definitions of self-narration, I find that their criteria are not limited to writing, and that these attempts at definition have to do with the broader need to distinguish between genres and to not mix them. To understand why this is particularly critical in the case of self-narration, I consider incest as a primary forbidden mixing. I then turn to critical readings of Antigone to talk about binaries, borders, crossings, and transgressions.

“Only violence counts, only evil works ceaselessly and unhindered…”: Representations of Rape in Contemporary Modern Greek Literature

Marita Paparousi — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper uses a feminist framework to explore representations of rape in contemporary Greek prose. By focusing on discursive and narrative strategies employed by writers when dealing with rape its aim is to explore the ways rape is both “scripted” by and “scripts” social and cultural norms. More specifically, at stake throughout this paper is the role that rape plays to the construction of gender identity and sexuality.

Theoretical and Methodological Observations on an Interdisciplinary Approach. Gender and the Working Class in Literature

Vasiliki Petsa, Vasilis Petikas — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This article aims to contribute to the theoretical and methodological discussions within the field of New Working Studies by critically examining the terms of conducting intersectional research. In the first part, we present in a concise manner the pertinent argumentation within Social Sciences, while also tracing the origins and the evolution, as well as the challenges and ambiguities, of such ventures. In the second, we provide an overview of intersectional approaches which adopt and critically re-elaborate Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological schema and theory, by tapping into the concepts of ‘capital’, ‘habitus’ and “symbolic violence” as a means of examining the formation and mutations of identity. In the final part, we discuss the possibility of articulating a Bourdieu-inspired intersectional approaches for the analysis of working-class literature and assess their validity and potential.

Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin’s, by Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Process of Subjectification and Self-Making of the Heroine

Katerina Spanopoulou — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The present work is a study of the novel Sara Crewe or, what happened at Miss Minchin’s (Burnett, 1888). The critical approach of New Historicism, that places the text in its socio-historical environment (Abrams, 2012), is used to analyze the text, along with elements of Female Studies, mainly the combination of feminist theory with Foucault’s discourse theory, according to which gender is shaped by social conventions that influence the sense of self (Mills, 2001). We try to determine the extent and the ways the text undermines the dominant discourses that it reproduces

Art and Self-Narration: Struggle and Resistance in Kia LaBeija’s Self-Portrait “Eleven”

Nansy Katraki — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The article examines Kia LaBeija’s self-narration in her self-portrait “eleven,” which is structured by her experiences as an HIV-positive and queer woman of color living in New York. The self-portrait is analyzed through the lenses of gender, race, sexuality, and health, in order to highlight how her art disrupts the political field and contributes to creating an archive of silenced female experiences. I focus on “negative” emotions, such as loneliness and fear, as forces resisting the normative structures of heteronormative power. Through LaBeija’s work, I argue that self-narrative is not only a structural component of subjectification but also a testament to existence, offering insight into how non-privileged subjects experience urban spaces.

Queering self-defense: the notion of the self and the belonging beyond identity in communities constructed through violence

Mel Kalfanti — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, I draw from findings of my ethnographic research in feminst and queer self-defense, in which the notios of the self, identity and community are central, with the aim to reclaim these notions, as they are brought about by a genealogy of exclusion and separation. By outlining key aspects of this genealogy, I aim to show how the construction of the notion of the self is inextricably linked with the construction of the nation state, and therefore it is a concept that is embedded in nationalist and racist discourses: it is a specifc self, that of the sovereign, dominant subject of liberalism, who is male, white and a property owner (Dorlin 2022). Against this construction, I consider that feminist and queer self-defense is a privileged field from which to propose an alternative, queer understanding of the self, that is based on relationality and vulnerabiltiy and makes use of the "privilege of the partial perspective" (Hawaray 2014), of the writing from a position away from that of the sovereign subject. In searching for an answer to the question "which self does self-defense seek to defend?", I find that this self is part of a community constructed by a shared embodied vulnerability to violence. Through these questions, I aim to understand how belonging in a community is constructed beyond the rigid limits of identity, by placing the subjects that historically are excluded from the category of the human at the centre of my research, in order to make part of a productive discussion that brings feminist critical thought close to anthropological praxis.

Hashtag feminism and black feminist critique

Penny Paspali — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this article I consider hashtag feminism as a contribution to the formation of social movements and as a modality of feminist archiving, visibility, dissent, and protest. Specifically, I focus on black feminist hashtags generated between 2013 and 2023 in North America, such as #SayHerName, #YesAllWhiteWomen, and #YouOkSis?, that have challenged both white feminism and black movements led by cis men. Despite hashtag feminism being deeply connected to viral hashtags, such as #MeToo, which have promised inclusivity, WOC (Women of Colour) and trans communities have denounced them as exclusive to white cis women.

The Encounter Between Ethics and Politics in Judith Butler’s Conception of Performativity

George Prodromou — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The article examines the “encounter” between ethics and politics in Judith Butler’s theory of performativity through her dialogue with the Levinasian notion of vulnerability. It begins by analyzing how Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics—shaped by the trauma of antisemitism and the experience of Nazi extermination—establishes a transcendent responsibility toward the Other, one that often discourages embodied political action. The article then shows that Butler challenges this metaphysical ethics by reconfiguring it through the lens of performativity: vulnerability becomes a condition for political resistance and public appearance, rather than a reason to withdraw from the field of struggle.

Feminist Thought in Technoscientific Practice and the Diffractive Perspective of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad

Anna Chronaki — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The feminist thought of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, emphasizing the materiality of knowledge, resists epistemological approaches that prioritize the social construction of discursive representations along with ethical and ontological assumptions that remain grounded in the ideals of a Western, white, anthropocentric subject envisioning the unconditional development of technoscientific innovations for the domestication of wild nature, dangerous femininity, and uncontrollable chaos. This text presents their work and contribution to a feminist technoscience that supports us to move beyond dichotomies by focusing on the diffractive perspective. This perspective, by foregrounding knowledge as a situated process of intra-action with matter and with the materiality of the elements that constitute and co-shape the technoscientific practice itself, destabilizes the epistemological dominance of an anthropocentric language that limits itself in defining, determining, and confining objects and subjects within binary identities such as male/female, nature/culture, matter/language, body/mind, human/machine.

Para-institutions and Spectralities in the cultural and knowledge industries. Art instituting practices

Elpida Karaba — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The paper presents two collective schemes of artistic, curatorial and pedagogical practice, their methods and methodologies, and their “off-center” situatedness. In the light of feminist theory, anti-colonial studies and radical epistemologies, both structures organize an artistic-pedagogical program that confronts the very processes of instituing in the harsh imperative of the globalized knowledge economy. It presents practices and methodologies such as those of the willful archives, translation and micropublishing, the deterritorialization of history, expanded museopedagogies, and techno-aesthetic artistic interventions, which formulate an archive of actions, tactics and strategies, educational materials and perhaps new artistic forms and genres, in order to produce small and larger disruptions to the hegemonic models of cultural practice, reclaiming-through their spectrality- a dynamic role for art of challenging the phenomena of our times, the right to expression and making art, the cultivation of social consciousness and citizenship, the confrontation of exhaustion and fatigue and the possibilities of learning otherwise.

Tropicalities of artistic research

Valia Papastamou — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The paper examines the tropicalities of artistic-research practices through queer/feminist, postcolonial critical perspectives, art theory, and theories of artistic research. It develops the performative interrelation between research and art through the performativity of knowledge. It further traces the expansions, the (re)turns, and the ways of instituting that shape the field on the grounds of interdisciplinarity. It refers more specifically to the genealogies of (para/anti) institutional formations and spaces of pedagogical performativity. Finally, it explores, through a double reading of theory and artwork, intersectional claims that expand the critical epistemologies of art.

Nautilus ballast

Phoebe Giannisi — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

ναυτίλος περίβλημα έρμα λόγια θάνατος λόγια