This two‑day workshop introduces the concept of the Intimate Turn as a critical genealogy of European feminist thought from the fin de siècle. It examines how the category of “woman” was produced within late nineteenth‑ and early twentieth‑century metaphysical, medical, and philosophical discourses, and how this construction was contested through biographical writing, performance, and embodied practices.
May 21, 17.00–18.30
Day one reconstructs the paradigm of the “metaphysical woman” in authors such as Otto Weininger, Paul Julius Möbius, and Ludwig Klages, who articulate gender as essence, deficiency, or spiritual alterity. Against this framework, we analyse feminist counter‑discourses that relocate critique within the intimate sphere: Laura Marholm’s biographical method as epistemic resistance, Ellen Key’s rethinking of love, sexuality, and motherhood as sites of ethical self‑formation, and Sibilla Aleramo’s literary reconfiguration of autonomy and maternal experience.
May 22, 17.00–18.30
Day two is devoted to a textual workshop and collective discussion centred on a case study: Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Methodologically, the workshop combines intellectual history, feminist genealogy, gender studies, close textual analysis, and conceptual reconstruction. Participants will be encouraged to critically assess continuities, ruptures, and methodological tensions across the proposed genealogy.
This workshop is designed specifically for doctoral researchers in philosophy, gender studies, and related disciplines. It offers advanced methodological training in feminist intellectual history, combining close textual analysis with conceptual reconstruction.
The workshop is organized as part of the PhD program in Philosophy at the UL FH, lead by tenured professor Raivis Bičevskis.
 at the University of Latvia (UL), welcoming new researchers, PhD students and other to attend a workshop "The Intimate Turn across Europe: Deconstruction of the Metaphysical Woman in Laura Marholm, Ellen Key, and Sibilla."){kind=link}