Rada Iveković

Rada Ivekovic
Born	1945 Zagreb, Yugoslavia
Era	20th-century philosophy
School	Buddhist philosophy, feminist philosophy
Main interests	Political philosophy, feminist philosophy
Notable ideas	"Le partage de la raison"

Rada Iveković (born 1945 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia) is a Croatian professor, philosopher, Indologist, and writer.

Research

Ivekovic’s research interests include comparative philosophy (Asian philosophy, particularly Indian, and Western), feminist theory and feminist philosophy as well as political philosophy.

In particular, the following aspects have been of intellectual inspiration for Ivekovic’s work: contemporary European philosophy, postmodern philosophy, Orientalism in (Western) philosophy, the feminine in philosophy, issues of nation, state und citizenship, problems of nationalism, of violence and war, European identity issues, and democracy.

Ivekovic’s other interests include: literary theory and literary criticism, religion and mythology, gender studies and women writers, anthropology, and contemporary French philosophy in particular.

Political positioning

Ivekovic holds that the inequality of the sexes (Inégalité des sexes) and other alterities, inequalities, exclusions, subordinating inclusions (e.g. through discrimination by gender, national citizenship, ethnicity, colonization) leads to a fatal partitioning of reason ("Le partage de la raison"). On the war events on the territory of Yugoslavia she takes an explicitly anti-patriarchal, anti-racist and non-nationalist stance.

In 1997 Ivekovic published a study on gender/sex in philosophy, taking issue with Jean-François Lyotard.

Curriculum vitae

Growing up mostly in Zagreb and Belgrade, with A-Levels 1964 (Primary school partly at French school in Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Germany). Ivekovic lived mostly in Zagreb, from 1963 until leaving Croatia for exile in 1991/1992 by which she meant to protest against nationalism.

At Zagreb University, Indology, Philosophy and English Studies, also at Belgrade University, and,1970–1973, Buddhist philosophy at Delhi University. Holds degrees in Indology and English from Zagreb University, 1969.

1972 PhD on Buddhist Philosophy, Delhi University.

From 1975 to 1991/1992 Lecturer in the History of Asian Philosophy and Comparative Philosophy at Zagreb University.

1987 Sabbatical at the Faculty of Philosophy at Banaras Hindu University, Benares.

1991/1992 Ivekovic leaves Zagreb.

1993 Habilitation on the philosophical anthropology of difference, Paris VIII.

1998-2003 Professor at Paris VIII.

Since 2003 Professor in the Department of Sociology at University Jean Monnet - St.Etienne.

Since 2004 Program Director at Collège international de philosophie (Paris)

Selected works in English

• 2004: "COMMENTARY - The Veil in France: Secularism, Nation, Women". Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 39, 11, 1117-1119.
• 2005: "Borders and Partitions: Exception as Space and Time" (Abstract for the conference Polemos, Stasis ... War, Civil War, 24–27 June 2005, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan: Center for Humanities and Social Theory). [1]
• 2005: "The Fiction of Gender Constructing the Fiction of Nation: On How Fictions Are Normative, and Norms Produce Exceptions". Anthropological Yearbook of European Cultures 2005 (Gender and Nation in South Eastern Europe), 19-38.

Sources

• Most comprehensive CV, until 2004, in English
• Short portrait in German with photo, 1997

Further reading

• Grebowicz, Margret. Gender after Lyotard. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.