Hi, I’m Stephanie

I’m a scholar-artist working at the intersection of critical theory, feminist and queer philosophy, psychoanalysis and arts-based research. My work rethinks subjectivity, sexuality and sociality through tenderness, reading Freud critically through feminist, queer and decolonial lenses. I’m Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the School of Social Sciences, Hasselt University, and I’m training as a sexual and relationship therapist at PXL. My brain-computer interface installation Tender Rhythms, which turns brainwave synchrony between two people into sound and image, has been shown in Brussels, Leuven, Hasselt and Atlanta.

I describe my work as TENDER ACTIVISM, which shifts the focus from the individual to the tender intersubjective relationships between and beyond us. Through various scholarly and artistic modalities – including writing, singing, interactive installations, EEG bio-feedback art, performance art, and teaching – my body of work critiques and aims to subvert the colonial, ableist, hetero-patriarchal, neo-liberal obsession with autonomous and invulnerable subjectivity, binary sociality, and phallic sexuality. Instead, I propose a radical rethinking of subjectivity, sociality, and sexuality as tender.

This tender activism is deeply informed by my feminist, psychoanalytic, queer, Black, post-colonial, philosophic, and affect studies RESEARCH. The term “tender” (Zärtlich) is borrowed from the ‘hysterics’ in Freud’s early work, who used the word tenderness (or Zärtlichkeit) to describe an alternative and non-phallic kind of sexuality and subjectivity. My work reclaims this silenced and neglected term to continue the hysteric’s proto-feminist, proto-queer, proto-relational, and proto-affect work, reimagining sexual desire and subjectivity as non-phallic, post-orgasmic, and non-genital-centered.

While some researchers continue Freud’s trend of connoting tenderness as infantile, maternal, feminine, and emasculate, my artistic research aims to debunk this connotation. Etymologically, tenderness is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root -ten, -tan, meaning to stretch or to be stretched. Rethinking individuals, socialities, and erotics as stretchable entities is also at the heart of my ART. Given that tenderness shares its Proto-Indo-European root with words like “tune,” “tone,” and “dance,” my art often features music and sonification. Using my voice, body, ukulele, city noises, and modern neuroscience technologies, I create interactive sound installations, soundscapes, lullabies, and songs that explore and give voice to the so often silenced inter-subjective tenderness.

In addition to my research, this intermodal and interdisciplinary combination of theory and art informs my TEACHING. My classes in critical theory and philosophy emphasize the subversive potential of art to critique and dismantle the problematic ideologies underpinning colonial, ableist, hetero-patriarchy. My transformative pedagogical style equips students with a critical ‘toolkit’ to analyze and integrate art into their exploration and deconstruction of hegemonic constructions of sex, gender, race, and ability. This interdisciplinary approach to research-based art also influences my CURATION of hybrid events, conferences and workshops.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like me to give a guest lecture or talk in your course or at your event. I’m also always open to academic and artistic collaborations! I hope you enjoy my website, which provides an overview of my past and current projects, research, and courses!