Talk 9: Autonomy Beyond Kant: Butler, Tronto, and Interdependence. Talk 10: ntervening Assemblages of Trans-formation/Action: Beatriz Nascimento (1942–1995)

Jake Nicholas Brooks, Kaimé Guerrero Valencia, Katia Raya Rami, Daniel Fischer, Jil Muller (Paderborn University), Marguerite El Asmar Bou Aoun (Saint Joseph University of Beirut, Lebanese American University)

Register here: https://indico.uni-paderborn.de/event/156/

02.06.2026, 4.30-6pm (Paris time)

Jake Nicholas Brooks - Autonomy Beyond Kant: Butler, Tronto, and Interdependence

The aim of this contribution is to highlight - from a standpoint of intersectional critique – the limitation of the Kantian conception of autonomy, grounded on a male and autonomous subject, that has shaped Western philosophical and theological discourses. The contribution will develop along two complementary lines. First, drawing on Butler’s critique of the State of Nature tradition, it will show how the subject of modern philosophy has always been conceived as already adult, male, and autonomous, thus masking the condition of dependency inherent to human beings. Butler’s analysis reveals how this framework is produced through exclusions of those identities, which are shaped by gender oppression and racialization. Butler’s work demonstrates that dependency is not a deviation from the norm, rather a constitutive feature of human life. Secondly, relying on Tronto’s care ethic, the contribution will argue that humanity is better understood as grounded on interdependence, where care relationships are not only fundamental for democratic societies, but also for a responsible and adequate care of human beings. Tronto’s analysis highlights how the unequal distribution of care labor - which is historically borne by women or racialized and marginalized groups - is grounded on “passes” given to men, that exempt them from care responsibilities. Through Tronto’s theory it will become clear that a model of humanity grounded on interdependence and responsibility is necessary for a more equal ethical and political life. Through this two-fold analysis, this contribution aims at demonstrating the necessity for an ontological shift: it is necessary to overcome the conception of humanity as male-centered, autonomous and self-made, to a vision of humanity as interdependent, needy, vulnerable, and relational.

About the Speaker: Jake Nicholas Brooks is MA graduate with honors in Philosophy at University of Rome “La Sapienza”. His research interests revolve around Political Philosophy, Feminist Theories, and Gender Studies. He carried out a thesis on the Habermasian conception of progress. He has published an article in double-blind peer review for Quaderni Leif - ethical and moral journal from the University of of Catania - on Tronto’s ethics’s of care and Simone Weil’s perspective on war. He is currently working on a paper for Etica-Mente, another journal of University of Catania, concerning Tronto’s conception of interdependence

Kaimé Guerrero Valencia - Intervening Assemblages of Trans-formation/Action: Beatriz Nascimento (1942-1995)

This paper examines the intellectual, artistic, and political contributions of Beatriz Nascimento (1942–1995), a leading figure of Brazil’s Black Movement. It situates her work at the intersection of historiography, aesthetics, and political theory, showing how she developed innovative conceptual and methodological tools to contest colonial structures of knowledge and create new practices of Black autonomy. Through an interdisciplinary analysis of her essays, poetry, archival materials, and the documentary Ôrí (1989), the paper argues that Nascimento, by mobilizing writing, film, and activism as intertwined strategies, elaborates a distinct theoretical, methodological, and ethical approach that redefines Black historiography, advances the conception of a Black utopia, and reconfigures the quilombo (maroon societies) as a political and existential category. At the core of Nascimento’s oeuvre is the concept of trans-formação/ação, a neologism that denotes processes of transformation enacted through language. She theorizes language not as a neutral medium but as a site of material and historical change, capable of unsettling hegemonic orders and generating new forms of collective subjectivity. The paper demonstrates how she strategically combined academic, poetic, and cinematic registers to transform language itself into an instrument of resistance. Nascimento’s work establishes the conditions for new forms of Black historiography in which freedom is articulated not as an abstract universal but as a lived and collective practice. Her oeuvre constitutes an embodied, aesthetic, and political historiography of the Black diaspora, in which the quilombo functions as both archive and horizon of freedom, and Black utopia materializes through collective practices of memory, writing, and resistance.

About the Speaker: Kaimé Guerrero Valencia were born in Quito, Ecuador, and has been living in Berlin for ten years. They studied sociology and political science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, followed by a MA degree in interdisciplinary Latin American studies with a gender profile at the Free University of Berlin. They are currently completing their PhD in the Collaborative Research Center Intervening Arts in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Their research interests include the intersections between aesthetic, political and scientific processes in the production of alternative forms of word-making