María Inés La Greca

Profile picture for user María Greca
University of Buenos Aires/Tres de Febrero National University
function of history
Biography and/or project

I hold a PhD in philosophy from University of Buenos Aires, where I teach Philosophy of History. I am Associate Professor of Research Methodology in Tres de Febrero National University, where I also teach Gender Epistemology in the Master’s Degree Program on Gender Studies and Politics. I am currently developing my research thanks to a postdoctoral scholarship at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and since 2015, I am the director of the Gender Studies Interdisciplinary Network at Tres de Febrero National University. 

My original field of study has been narrativist philosophy of history. In my doctoral dissertation I developed a performative interpretation of Hayden White’s major insights on historical theory, narrativity and figuration through John Austin's speech act theory and Judith Butler’s performativity theory. I claim that seeing White's tropological perspective as performative enables us to rethink the philosophical problem of the narrative representation of the past (i.e., the value of narrativity for the representation of reality), a problem that is still present in contemporary debates about identity constitution and historical writing. 

Thanks to a Fulbright scholarship under Butler’s sponsorship in Columbia University (2014) I begun my current research on gender theory and feminism. I have moved forward my PhD research to engage narrativity, performativity and identity constitution within the realm of gender studies, a field I believe can profit from a dialogue with the theoretical discussions from the narrativist debate -and viceversa.

I have published several articles in international academic journals and edited volumes; more recently, “Narrative Trouble, or Hayden White’s Desire for a Progressive Historiography Refigured by Judith Butler’s Performativity Theory” in Storia della Storiografia; “Hayden White and Joan W. Scott’s Feminist History: the Practical Past, the Political Present and an Open Future” in Rethinking History;  “The Future of Philosophy of History from its Narrativist Past: Figuration, Middle Voice Writing and Performativity” in Journal of the Philosophy of History. I am  currently working on a book based on my doctoral research on narrativism, historical theory and performativity to be published in 2018.