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Teresa de Lauretis coined the term ‘queer theory’; for her, it was a means of denaturalizing sexuality and developing a theory of lesbian desire, which she provocatively, yet affirmatively, called ‘fetishistic’ and ‘perverse’. Drawing on semiotics, psychoanalysis, and the analysis of power, Teresa de Lauretis formulated a process of sexual structuring that informed her understanding of queer theory.

Organized by ICI Berlin in cooperation with the Institute for Queer Theory

Registration required.

This talk addresses the question of the map and the territory through the intellectual and institutional history of queer studies. It has been the burden of queer thought to push back against philosophical realism and the idea that, for instance, gender is simply there, a set of incontrovertible biological facts or an ordinary feature of shared experience.

Part of the ICI Lecture Series Scale.

Livestream available.
Registration opens on 5 May 2026.

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This conference takes an interest in minutiae at the levels of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. It invites smaller-scale perspectives to interrogate the interrelations between form and content, and asks how aesthetics forms theory and how theory performs politics.

Organized by Nicolas Helm-Grovas, Jasmine Pisapia, Angelica Stathopoulos, and Verónica Stedile Luna

Registration opens on 5 May 2026.

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Combining the notions of performativity and embodiment, this book situates the body in the realm of processes, movement, and poiesis, seeking to generate alternative configurations to mind–body dualism. Focused on language, literature, dance, affect, gender, sport, and disability, the contributions to this volume emphasize doing over being: the body does and is done; it is engaged in a movement of co-constitution with the world. It is in doing that bodies produce knowledge and shared or contested social meaning. 

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