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3rd Feminist Encounters with Marxism: Bodies, Politics and Economy

26-27 February 2026, University of Turku

Keynote lecture: Dr Søren Mau: Towards an Eco-Marxist-Feminist Theory of the Body

Marxist feminism is currently experiencing a resurgence. It is capturing the attention of an increasing number of feminists trying to understand how to intervene, theoretically and politically, in the forces of social oppression and exploitation at play both locally and globally. The core of this resurgence lies in the theoretical diversity of Marxist feminism, which weaves various elements from Marxist theory together with theoretical traditions such as queer theory, intersectionality, and postcolonial theory.

This third Feminist Encounters with Marxism seminar delves into these dynamic intersections. The event explores the evolving landscape of Marxist feminist thought, seeking to understand how it inspires and informs feminist research and politics today. Marxism has animated feminist analysis and struggles in many ways, and feminist scholars have made important contributions to Marxist thought by further developing its conceptual repertoire, expanding its scope of questions and contexts and reconstructing its theoretical premises. Fruitful exchanges have involved, for instance, social reproduction, embodiment, psychic dimensions of power, the politics of class, gender, race and sexuality, and the material conditions of everyday life and family.

Feminist Encounters with Marxism brings together scholars and students interested in the intersections between Marxism and feminism. We welcome papers that engage with Marxist thought from different feminist perspectives. The event consists of a keynote lecture by Dr Søren Mau and working groups. The keynote lecture is open to everyone, working groups will be reserved to a limited number of registered participants.

Submission guidelines:
Please register for the event through an online submission form by 15 November 2025: https://link.webropolsurveys.com/S/CD5A91DBA3D15625

Please indicate whether you wish to present a paper or attend without presentation. Preference will be given to those presenting a paper. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 30 November 2025.

The event is organized in a collaboration with Finnish Karl Marx Society, Department of Social Research, University of Turku and Department of Gender Studies, Örebro University.

Søren Mau: Towards an Eco-Marxist-Feminist Theory of the Body

Abstract

Throughout the history of Western thought, the body has frequently been overlooked, devalued, or treated with mistrust and hostility. This failure to acknowledge human corporeality and its entanglement with the rest of nature is deeply implicated in gendered and racialized oppression as well as in contemporary ecological crises. In recent decades, feminist scholars across the humanities and social sciences have subjected this so-called “somatophobia”, as philosopher Elizabeth Spelman calls it, to a sustained critique. Yet within this “corporeal turn,” the Marxist tradition has remained strikingly absent, often dismissed as outdated or irrelevant. In this talk, I argue that Marx’s writings on the body have been underestimated and that a critical reconstruction of his remarks on human corporeality, when combined with insights from recent Marxist feminist and eco-Marxist scholarship, offers the basis for a powerful Marxist theory of the body.

Biographical note:
Søren Mau (b. 1989) is an unemployed Danish philosopher who lives in the forest near Gothenburg, Sweden. He received his PhD in 2019 from the University of Southern Denmark and has since held postdoctoral positions at various universities. He is the author of Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital (Verso, 2023). His research explores critical theories of capitalism, power, the body, human nature, and utopian thought, with a central focus on freedom: its nature and sources, the political and economic barriers to its realisation under contemporary capitalism, and its possible future forms. He is currently working on a book outlining a utopian vision of a post-capitalist world.

Organizing committee:
Suvi Salmenniemi (University of Turku),
Sami Torssonen (University of Turku),
Evelina Johansson Wilén (Örebro University)

For more information, please contact Suvi Salmenniemi, suvi.salmenniemi [at] utu.fi.