Dosentti, yliopistonlehtori Kronqvist Camilla and working group (EEROS)

349800 €

Ethical Explorations: Rethinking Our Sexual Relations

Tieteellinen tutkimus / siihen pohjautuva työ | Kolmivuotinen

The research project explores what an ethics of sexual relations could entail by attending to the moral-existential aspects of how we conceptualize our intimate relationships. Although gender, sexuality and sexual desire have been addressed in popular, academic and activist debates in the aftermath of for instance the #metoo movement, the responses have largely focused on political, theoretical and epistemological matters regarding consent, negotiation, human rights and policy development. Also, in cases where sexual relations have been problematized as expressive of power relations growing out of oppressive societal structures of violence, the moral-existential philosophical aspects have been overlooked. To counter this vacuum, our project investigates the role concepts such as love, desire, longing as well as pain, humiliation, and shame have in forming our understanding of ourselves and others as gendered beings in intimate, sexual relationships. We relate public debates to discussions in the academic world, and bring together perspectives from philosophical discussions on ethics and everyday language use with discussions in gender studies and queer theory. Combining these scholarly fields is rare and promises significant advances for understanding contemporary intimate relationships. Our research material brings academic research literature in contact with examples from art, music and literature. This allow us to open up new fields for exploring the ethical significance of sexual and gender relations in a growingly diverse society. By bringing out the evaluative features of how we come to make sense of these most vulnerable aspects of our intimate lives and relationships, we aim to articulate a deepened understanding of the ethical dimensions of discourses on sexuality and gender, in a way that avoids the kind of moralizing that is often an outcome when the ethical dimensions of our interpersonal relationships are left unacknowledged.