Continental Philosophy Research Group Talk (Jeta Mulaj, Toronto Metropolitan)

The Continental Philosophy Research Group is pleased to welcome as guest speaker Jeta Mulaj, an assistant professor of Philosophy at Toronto Metropolitan University. Dr. Mulaj specializes in feminist philosophy, social and political philosophy, critical theory, Marxism, and decolonial thought. Particularly, she works on questions related to stability, capitalism, emancipation, revolution, gender and sexuality, as well as Eastern European thought and the Balkans. She is currently completing a manuscript titled “Reclaiming Stability: The Dialectic of Stability and Instability,” which  seeks to recover stability as a revolutionary concept. ​Dr. Mulaj also co-founded the Balkan Society for Theory and Practice (for which she serves as executive director), an international research society based in Kosovo, and is a research associate for the Society for Women of Ideas.

Talk Title

The Emergence of the Fragmented Subject in Capitalism and Feminism

Talk Abstract

This talk analyzes a pervasive trend in feminist theory: the proposition that subjectivity is fragmented. It examines the ontological and political implications of this position, highlighting both its promises and dangers. While this view has advanced important critiques of the self as a fixed essence, it tends to reify fragmentation as an ontological condition. By contrast, this talk draws on Frankfurt School critical theory and Marxist feminism to reveal the intimate link between the historical emergence of fragmentation in capitalism and women’s oppression. Lacking this history, it argues, we can neither fully understand nor effectively combat gender domination today.

About the Continental Philosophy Group

One of six departmental research interest groups, the Continental Philosophy Group works in the traditions of textual interpretation of human consciousness, phenomenology, and post-structuralist critical theory, among other related traditions of thought.