Topologies of Sexual Difference

Luce Irigaray Circle Conference, Melbourne, Australia

Wednesday 10 December to Friday 12 December 2014

The Communication, Politics and Culture Research Centre at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, with the support of the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, will host an interdisciplinary conference inspired by Luce Irigaray and her thinking of sexual difference. This will be the seventh meeting of the Luce Irigaray Circle. The overall theme for the conference will be “Topologies of Sexual Difference.

In order to think and to experience sexual difference, Irigaray suggests that the Western tradition’s conception of space and time could be reconsidered. There are at least three senses of topologies we seek to address: as the places in which bodies are and become, as ideal spaces of conceptualization, and as the designation of specific contexts. These contexts include, but are not limited to sexuality, “race”/ethnicity, gender, class, posthumanism and the animal, new materialisms, and sovereignty.

We welcome engagements with topologies after Irigaray in fields such as politics, philosophy, aesthetics, visual culture, linguistics, literature, media and cultural studies, psychoanalysis, religious studies, music, sound studies, architecture, education and legal studies.

The conference will feature the following keynote speakers:

Professor Elizabeth Grosz, Duke University, USA
Professor Pheng Cheah, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Further keynote speaker to be confirmed.

In addition to the plenary sessions, the conference will organize parallel sessions and an exhibition of visual art. Abstracts (200 words max.) are sought for papers proposed for the parallel sessions (20 minute paper/10 minute discussion). Proposals for the exhibition must include visual support material, submitted via jpegs (low res) and/or urls. Please provide an accompanying abstract (200 words max) and short description of support material. All submissions must be received by February 15th, 2014.

We welcome submissions from graduate students as well as faculty. Responses from the organizing committee as to whether or not the paper or exhibition proposal has been accepted will be given by March 30th, 2014. If you require earlier confirmation of acceptance for funding purposes, please contact the conference organizers.

Please submit abstracts and exhibition proposals to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

In addition, the Irigaray Circle will sponsor the 6th annual Karen Burke Memorial Prize, awarded to the best paper submitted by a graduate student or recent PhD. The winner of the competition will give the Karen Burke Memorial Prize Lecture at a plenary session of the 2014 conference. Complete papers should be submitted to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 15th February 2014. Authors will be notified of the committee’s decision by March 30th 2014. (For more information see www.irigaray.org).

Information about conference registration will be posted by 30th April 2014.

Organizing committee:

Dr Rebecca Hill

Senior Lecturer in Literature and Philosophy

School of Media and Communication

RMIT University

Melbourne, Australia

Dr Louise Burchill
Visiting Lecturer in Contemporary French Philosophy, Aesthetics, & Feminist Thought
Centre for Ideas, Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts
University of Melbourne
Australia

Caroline Phillips
PhD Candidate
Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts
University of Melbourne
Australia

For further information please contact the conference organizers at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.