The Words of Gender. Circulation, Translation, and Interdisciplinarity
Deadline: 1 September 2025
Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, May 21–23, 2026
In the recent Who’s Afraid of Gender? (2024), Judith Butler reflects on translation and, concurrently, on the circulation of concepts within gender studies.
Sometimes a word does not work in other languages, and other times it discovers linguistic cousins it never knew it had. The salience of the term depends on translation, and affirming that translation often alters the meaning of a word as it arrives in another language and another context. (Butler 2024: 35).
Indeed, the cultural, disciplinary, and linguistic displacement of gendered language calls for a reconsideration of the semiotic pathways and networks used to define key terms. The movement from one language or culture to another—or among multiple languages and cultures—creates friction that brings to light new nuances and meanings.
The translation of gender-related, feminist, and intersectional terms produces a range of effects that invite fresh conceptual reflection. On one hand, translation is necessary to resist the increasing imperialism of English in the field (as seen, for example, in the adoption of ethics of care or queer politics in francophone scholarship), while also enabling greater political flexibility. Thinking about “the words of gender” through an intercultural and interlinguistic lens allows for the transnational dialogue of ideas. As Zahra Ali explains, this transnational perspective enables us “to transcend, to shake up (nefada), and to challenge national, gender, and sexual boundaries [and to] break with the idea of a ‘here’ and a ‘there’ mapped onto an imagined geography that sustains hegemonic white feminisms of the Global North” (Ali 2023: 149). Crucially, because no word can be perfectly “transposed” from one language to another, the resistances inherent to translation are intellectually generative: they compel us to denaturalize a “text” as something that might otherwise be seen as merely representing pre-discursive or natural facts. In this sense, the translation—and untranslatability—of such words lies at the very heart of the theoretical foundations of gender studies. When examined critically, translation introduces a productive strangeness into language, forces us to rework our terms, and undermines the illusion of discursive transparency.
Linguistic and cultural shifts have long been central to gender theory in the Western academy, particularly in the Global North, emerging from the entangled genealogies of French theory and North American comparative literature. Anne Emmanuelle Berger, in Le Grand Théâtre du genre, recalls that “after witnessing the making of ‘French thought’ in the United States, [she then] observed the ‘reinvention’ of Gender Studies upon returning to France, as if they had just ‘arrived’ from the U.S.” (Berger 2013: 10; our translation). Within this Franco-American genealogy, the words of gender are always already foreign—treated as outsiders and regarded as such by their critics—but they have nonetheless tended to become anchored in English. To critically reflect on the translation of gender-related terminology is to work toward freeing these terms from the grip of Anglo-Western, white, androcentric paradigms, and to remember that queer politics are, by definition, transborder (Preciado 2003). This also requires engaging with ecofeminist thought (Haraway 1991; 2016; d’Eaubonne 1974) on the possible or impossible relations among various systems of oppression—capitalist, patriarchal, and colonial. As intersectional thinkers have argued (hooks 1981; Crenshaw 1989; 1991), a too-direct “translation” of struggles across axes of oppression risks erasing within feminism the nuance and specificity of minoritized experiences. To reflect on the translation and displacement of gendered terms through the epistemological limits or "aporias of language" (Athanasiou 2003) is to acknowledge that knowledge is situated not only experientially, but also culturally, linguistically, and disciplinarily.
Feminist theories and queer questions are, from the outset, interdisciplinary. Much like linguistic translation, disciplinary border crossings generate productive friction in definitions and call for the interrogation of misunderstandings. How, form instance, is “asexuality” conceptualized in sociology, and how is it understood in medicine? How can “situated knowledges” emerge from the natural sciences and migrate into anthropology or philosophy? How are disciplinary shifts in terminology epistemologically linked to queer politics? Preciado notes that “the bodies of the queer multitude are also reappropriations and détournements of discourses from anatomical medicine and pornography, among others, which have constructed the modern straight and deviant body” (Preciado 2003: 22; our translation).
This conference invites critical reflection on the (non)definition of “the words of gender” as revealed through their movements. The difficulty of translating these terms, figures, and concepts calls into question the fixity of meaning and its ability to cross languages, cultures, and disciplines unchanged. Thus, the circulation of gendered terminology urges us to foreground the centrality of language, discourse, and performativity in political thought. It lies at the heart of the horizontal political possibilities of coalition, insofar as “translation is the condition of possibility for transnational feminism and effective solidarity against the ideological anti-gender movement” (Butler 2024: 35).
Paper and panel proposals must be submitted to lesmotsdugenre@gmail.com by September 1, 2025. We particularly welcome proposals addressing (but not limited to) the following themes:
- The conceptual consequences of defining a term in gender theory
- Linguistic imperialism and decolonial or postcolonial approaches to gender theory
- The impact of cultural or linguistic transfer on a gender-related concept, or proposals for alternative translations
- The definition and circulation of feminist/queer terms emerging from non-Western cultures
- Approaches to or analyses of the linguistic translation of a feminist or queer work
- Disciplinary shifts in the meaning or usage of gender-related terms
- Genealogies of concepts, figures, or imaginaries of gender (non-linear temporalities)
We also encourage proposals for interdisciplinary, interlinguistic, or intercultural panels (3 or 4 participants) organized around a single term or concept. In such sessions, individual presentations need not all address the term’s circulation directly; the panel as a whole will be expected to address this dimension.
While presentations can be in either of the three languages (French, English or Spanish), discussions will happen in French.
The conference will be held at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières from May 21 to 23, 2026.
This event is organized in partnership with the Dictionary of Gender in Translation. A selection of papers will be considered for publication in this online volume.
