2nd COWAP Intl Conference Kolkata, India

2nd COWAP Intl Conference Kolkata, India
Women in Romance, Sex and Marriage

Registrations contact: 

Phone: (91) 33 2281 6872 (D) 33 2287 6080 ext.245/257 
(weekdays 11am to 6pm and Saturdays 10am to 1pm) 

Email: [email protected] 

Women in Romance, Sex, & Marriage


COWAP Kolkata 2019 will be holding its 2nd International Conference in Kolkata in November 2019 at the MACE (Modern Academy of Continuing Education). COWAP, Committee on Women & Psychoanalysis, a wing of the International Psychoanalytical Association, London, will be collaborating with the Indian Psychoanalytical Society, Crystal Minds, & MACE to uphold this conference. Based on an interdisciplinary perspective it invites speakers and participants from various fields of social sciences, arts and humanities, practitioners from all schools of psychology, mental health practitioners, scholars, activists from across the world.
 
Concept Note:
The socio-economic global change along with its technical barrage on human life has had its impact on the private space of women’s lives across the world. It also comprises her private intimate dyad in sex and marriage to her even deeper internal fantasy world of romance. It has brought about a transformation of their needs and desires in family structures and intimacies. The private romantic dyad has equally gone through a transformational journey where the sense of privacy in romantic relationships is often shared/experienced in public technological platforms, open to ‘viewers’ thereby creating multiple and simultaneous participation in one’s private romantic dyad. So, where does one place ‘commitment’ in this flux of intimacy? What are the challenges that marriage as an institution is undergoing in response to this huge transition in time? How are the claims of same-gendered relationships affecting conventional heterosexual marriage and family structures?

Family Romance to  App-Romance:
In view of Freud’s ‘Family Romance’ it is said that it resonates all our deeper instinctual ties between siblings and parents, and our future internal romantic quest continues in its effort to re-create that pattern which has lost its sense of ‘family romance’ rooted in one’s unconscious. In today’s time with a cannonade of technological intervention within that family arena and in our internal fantasy world, how does the individual construct the many other virtual characters that have subsequently become an extension of one’s sense of home & family? Who else does this family romance gets enacted/practiced with? Does today’s ‘incest’ find an extension from the family platform of practice into the virtual world of illusion?

Sex & Intimacy:
For the emerging young modern Indian woman, who exercises her due claim of both her ‘private’ (romantic/intimate/sexual/domestic) and the ‘public’ (work/society) space, what issues of moral, cultural, familial conflicts may cross her path when confronted with her individual quest in (i) beyond institutional relationships (ii) same-sex relationships (iii) physical desires (iv) career pursuits? How has  violence in today’s time, its politics, entered and violated the woman’s independent claim to romance & intimacy against all obstacles?


Marriage as an Institution & Alternate Families:
Decline in marriage is a global phenomenon now – the Japan Times   (2016/17/18) has repeatedly published articles on the choice of women opting to be single. India is  increasingly voicing the same. The recent decriminalization of Section 377 in India has given further hope to same-sex relationships in the coming future and its subsequent  challenge to conventional heterosexual notions of marriage. So, what maybe the many  reasons for today’s women claiming singlehood to coupledom, or a new coupledom  beyond conventional marriages? How family is being re-constructed, re-defined through queer identity, same-sex marriages/partnerships, adoption, surrogacy?

Single Woman’s Narratives & Friendships:
For this emerging new dynamic woman it is imperative to look for familial, social support beyond its immediate boundaries of one’s family of origin’ or one’s immediate ‘intimate space’, opening up the vista of friends! Friends who are their community support, emotional support through their unconventional trajectory of life and work. Friends, who were the primary bonding of strength in   the initial phase of the feminist movement itself. But   has   this bonding of friendship between women also gone through transformation? How does the single   woman’s  narrative look at this friendship? Has patriarchy played any role in the ‘devaluation’ and destruction  of  this  community strength for women woven in their building of  friendships    over families? Do women themselves have a role to play in a surreptitious passive   manner in  this erosion of friendship?











 
When
23/11/2019 - 24/11/2019
Where
MACE 4th Floor, Modern High School for Girls Kolkata INDIA