Jana Cattien
Biographic Data
| ID | 364359 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jana Cattien |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jana |
| FAMILY NAME | Cattien |
| SIGNATURE | CATTIEN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7305-5174 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Political Lives of Pain
This paper is a critique of the common-sense view of pain and the role it plays in contemporary political life. I argue that the common-sense understanding of pain as a uniform and universal human experience has insidious political effects. It makes pain recognisable only insofar as the subject-in-pain becomes an object-like container of pain. I show that this feature of the common-sense view reflects a larger contradiction in contemporary politi…
Pleasure and the pain cave: Sport, Kink, and Jouissance
This paper explores the complex relationship between pleasure and pain in both sport and BDSM, challenging the common perception that seeking pain is irrational or pathological. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories, the authors argue that the pursuit of ‘pleasurable pain’ in these contexts reflects a deeper psychic drive, specifically Lacan’s concept of the ‘death drive’. The paper critiques dominant narratives that rationalize pain in sports as a …
Does this hurt: Feminism, Pain and the Problem of Reification
Feminist debates around sex have often revolved around the vexed question of whether women can achieve genuine pleasure under patriarchy. Some 'sex-negative' feminists have claimed that the entire debate around 'pleasure under patriarchy' rests on an ontological mistake: when women say that they experience sexual pleasure with men, what they mean by 'pleasure' is actually pain. On this view, pain is assumed to have an objective existence regardle…
"The China Syndrome": "Imagining Western Decline in the Age of "The Rise of China
This paper explores the persistent association between China and the apocalypse in Western political thought. Using the 1979 film The China Syndrome as a starting point, it examines how China is depicted as the specter of global catastrophe: as a society unable to recover from its own nineteenth-century collapse, and the post-apocalyptic form assumed by Europe itself. Through the writings of John Stuart Mill and Niall Ferguson, the paper highligh…
Neurotic Situations: A Critical Dialogue between Freud and Fanon
This essay facilitates a critical dialogue between Freud’s early “cathartic method” and Fanon’s notion of a “neurotic situation.” Although Fanon does not explicitly develop this concept as a counterpoint to the Freudian understanding of neurosis, we can nevertheless glean from his work a robust understanding of the kind of psycho-political suffering it designates. To be in a “neurotic situation,” I argue, is to experience neurotic symptoms that a…
The appropriating subject: Cultural appreciation, property and entitlement
What is cultural ‘appropriation’? What is cultural ‘appreciation’? Whatever the complex answer to this question, cultural appropriation is commonly defined as ‘the taking of something produced by members of one culture by members of another’ (Young 2005: 136), whilst appreciation is typically understood as mere ‘exploration’: ‘Appreciation explores whatever is there’. (Gracyk 2007: 112). These provisional definitions suggest that there is an in-p…
Antigenderism and White Feminist Reconstructions in Germany
This article critically reflects on dominant scholarship on antigenderism in Germany. In its most common usage, antigenderism refers to an ideological and discursive constellation that is opposed to critical scholarship and activism around gender and sexism. I argue against common accounts, which suggest that the critical analysis of antigenderism can bottom out in claims about sexism and gender rather than race and racism. In so doing, I urge fe…
Eerie: De-Formations and Fascinations
In this paper, we explore what it means for an object to be eerie. We argue that the Eerie is an index of phenomenology’s limits: it is a complex, contradictory moment in the dialectics of subject/object formation. If the familiar story of phenomenology correlates the contours of objects along transcendental vectors of subjective experience, the de-formations of eeriness emerge as the object’s resistance to our assimilation of it. An object’s eer…
What IsLeitkultur
This article interrogates the discursive regimes that underpin Leitkultur (guiding culture) discourse in contemporary Germany and argues that Leitkultur conjures Germany's imagined "freedom from history" from within Enlightenment temporalities of liberal freedom. This requires that liberal Germany mark its limits in certain moments of German history-namely, National Socialism-while disavowing its role in the constitution of German colonialism. Th…
Against “Transracialism”: Revisiting the Debate
This article critically reflects on some of the themes and assumptions at stake in the “transracialism” controversy, and connects them to important works in critical race theory: namely Rey Chow's notion of “coercive mimeticism” and Sara Ahmed's critique of white liberal multiculturalism. It argues that the analytic account of “race” that Tuvel draws upon in her article—Sally Haslanger's—is politically problematic, both on its own terms and in li…
When 'feminism' becomes a genre: Alias Grace and 'feminist' television
Alias Grace is just one of the many recent TV shows that was labelled 'feminist' so quickly and with such ease that one is left to wonder how much of a genre 'feminism' has already become. This article interrogates what is at stake for 'feminist' critique in labelling cultural phenomena as 'feminist'. I argue that certain ways of reading Alias Grace as a 'feminist' show preclude an alternative reading in which Alias Grace emerges as a critique of…
The appropriating subject: Cultural appreciation, property and entitlement
What is cultural ‘appropriation’? What is cultural ‘appreciation’? Whatever the complex answer to this question, cultural appropriation is commonly defined as ‘the taking of something produced by members of one culture by members of another’ (Young 2005: 136), whilst appreciation is typically understood as mere ‘exploration’: ‘Appreciation explores whatever is there’. (Gracyk 2007: 112). These provisional definitions suggest that there is an in-p…
Antigenderism and White Feminist Reconstructions in Germany
This article critically reflects on dominant scholarship on antigenderism in Germany. In its most common usage, antigenderism refers to an ideological and discursive constellation that is opposed to critical scholarship and activism around gender and sexism. I argue against common accounts, which suggest that the critical analysis of antigenderism can bottom out in claims about sexism and gender rather than race and racism. In so doing, I urge fe…
When 'feminism' becomes a genre: Alias Grace and 'feminist' television
Alias Grace is just one of the many recent TV shows that was labelled 'feminist' so quickly and with such ease that one is left to wonder how much of a genre 'feminism' has already become. This article interrogates what is at stake for 'feminist' critique in labelling cultural phenomena as 'feminist'. I argue that certain ways of reading Alias Grace as a 'feminist' show preclude an alternative reading in which Alias Grace emerges as a critique of…
Neurotic Situations: A Critical Dialogue between Freud and Fanon
This essay facilitates a critical dialogue between Freud’s early “cathartic method” and Fanon’s notion of a “neurotic situation.” Although Fanon does not explicitly develop this concept as a counterpoint to the Freudian understanding of neurosis, we can nevertheless glean from his work a robust understanding of the kind of psycho-political suffering it designates. To be in a “neurotic situation,” I argue, is to experience neurotic symptoms that a…
What IsLeitkultur
This article interrogates the discursive regimes that underpin Leitkultur (guiding culture) discourse in contemporary Germany and argues that Leitkultur conjures Germany's imagined "freedom from history" from within Enlightenment temporalities of liberal freedom. This requires that liberal Germany mark its limits in certain moments of German history-namely, National Socialism-while disavowing its role in the constitution of German colonialism. Th…
Does this hurt: Feminism, Pain and the Problem of Reification
Feminist debates around sex have often revolved around the vexed question of whether women can achieve genuine pleasure under patriarchy. Some 'sex-negative' feminists have claimed that the entire debate around 'pleasure under patriarchy' rests on an ontological mistake: when women say that they experience sexual pleasure with men, what they mean by 'pleasure' is actually pain. On this view, pain is assumed to have an objective existence regardle…
Eerie: De-Formations and Fascinations
In this paper, we explore what it means for an object to be eerie. We argue that the Eerie is an index of phenomenology’s limits: it is a complex, contradictory moment in the dialectics of subject/object formation. If the familiar story of phenomenology correlates the contours of objects along transcendental vectors of subjective experience, the de-formations of eeriness emerge as the object’s resistance to our assimilation of it. An object’s eer…
Against “Transracialism”: Revisiting the Debate
This article critically reflects on some of the themes and assumptions at stake in the “transracialism” controversy, and connects them to important works in critical race theory: namely Rey Chow's notion of “coercive mimeticism” and Sara Ahmed's critique of white liberal multiculturalism. It argues that the analytic account of “race” that Tuvel draws upon in her article—Sally Haslanger's—is politically problematic, both on its own terms and in li…
Against “Transracialism”: Revisiting the Debate
This article critically reflects on some of the themes and assumptions at stake in the “transracialism” controversy, and connects them to important works in critical race theory: namely Rey Chow's notion of “coercive mimeticism” and Sara Ahmed's critique of white liberal multiculturalism. It argues that the analytic account of “race” that Tuvel draws upon in her article—Sally Haslanger's—is politically problematic, both on its own terms and in li…
When 'feminism' becomes a genre: Alias Grace and 'feminist' television
Alias Grace is just one of the many recent TV shows that was labelled 'feminist' so quickly and with such ease that one is left to wonder how much of a genre 'feminism' has already become. This article interrogates what is at stake for 'feminist' critique in labelling cultural phenomena as 'feminist'. I argue that certain ways of reading Alias Grace as a 'feminist' show preclude an alternative reading in which Alias Grace emerges as a critique of…
What IsLeitkultur
This article interrogates the discursive regimes that underpin Leitkultur (guiding culture) discourse in contemporary Germany and argues that Leitkultur conjures Germany's imagined "freedom from history" from within Enlightenment temporalities of liberal freedom. This requires that liberal Germany mark its limits in certain moments of German history-namely, National Socialism-while disavowing its role in the constitution of German colonialism. Th…
Eerie: De-Formations and Fascinations
In this paper, we explore what it means for an object to be eerie. We argue that the Eerie is an index of phenomenology’s limits: it is a complex, contradictory moment in the dialectics of subject/object formation. If the familiar story of phenomenology correlates the contours of objects along transcendental vectors of subjective experience, the de-formations of eeriness emerge as the object’s resistance to our assimilation of it. An object’s eer…
The appropriating subject: Cultural appreciation, property and entitlement
What is cultural ‘appropriation’? What is cultural ‘appreciation’? Whatever the complex answer to this question, cultural appropriation is commonly defined as ‘the taking of something produced by members of one culture by members of another’ (Young 2005: 136), whilst appreciation is typically understood as mere ‘exploration’: ‘Appreciation explores whatever is there’. (Gracyk 2007: 112). These provisional definitions suggest that there is an in-p…
Antigenderism and White Feminist Reconstructions in Germany
This article critically reflects on dominant scholarship on antigenderism in Germany. In its most common usage, antigenderism refers to an ideological and discursive constellation that is opposed to critical scholarship and activism around gender and sexism. I argue against common accounts, which suggest that the critical analysis of antigenderism can bottom out in claims about sexism and gender rather than race and racism. In so doing, I urge fe…
"The China Syndrome": "Imagining Western Decline in the Age of "The Rise of China
This paper explores the persistent association between China and the apocalypse in Western political thought. Using the 1979 film The China Syndrome as a starting point, it examines how China is depicted as the specter of global catastrophe: as a society unable to recover from its own nineteenth-century collapse, and the post-apocalyptic form assumed by Europe itself. Through the writings of John Stuart Mill and Niall Ferguson, the paper highligh…
Neurotic Situations: A Critical Dialogue between Freud and Fanon
This essay facilitates a critical dialogue between Freud’s early “cathartic method” and Fanon’s notion of a “neurotic situation.” Although Fanon does not explicitly develop this concept as a counterpoint to the Freudian understanding of neurosis, we can nevertheless glean from his work a robust understanding of the kind of psycho-political suffering it designates. To be in a “neurotic situation,” I argue, is to experience neurotic symptoms that a…
The Political Lives of Pain
This paper is a critique of the common-sense view of pain and the role it plays in contemporary political life. I argue that the common-sense understanding of pain as a uniform and universal human experience has insidious political effects. It makes pain recognisable only insofar as the subject-in-pain becomes an object-like container of pain. I show that this feature of the common-sense view reflects a larger contradiction in contemporary politi…
Pleasure and the pain cave: Sport, Kink, and Jouissance
This paper explores the complex relationship between pleasure and pain in both sport and BDSM, challenging the common perception that seeking pain is irrational or pathological. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories, the authors argue that the pursuit of ‘pleasurable pain’ in these contexts reflects a deeper psychic drive, specifically Lacan’s concept of the ‘death drive’. The paper critiques dominant narratives that rationalize pain in sports as a …
Does this hurt: Feminism, Pain and the Problem of Reification
Feminist debates around sex have often revolved around the vexed question of whether women can achieve genuine pleasure under patriarchy. Some 'sex-negative' feminists have claimed that the entire debate around 'pleasure under patriarchy' rests on an ontological mistake: when women say that they experience sexual pleasure with men, what they mean by 'pleasure' is actually pain. On this view, pain is assumed to have an objective existence regardle…
Sociology (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · History (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Politics (3 works) · Psychology (3 works) · Subject (documents (3 works)