Perceiving in Red: The Visible, The Invisible, and Aesthetic Trespassing

We are one of Australia’s leading social sciences and humanities research institutes.Our work investigates the implications of globalising forces in our lives and communities to power equitable and just change in society.Bringing together world-renowned researchers from Deakin’s Faculty of Arts and Education, we creates cutting‑edge knowledge about citizenship, diversity, inclusion and globalisation that furthers scholarship, actively informs policy, and drives public engagement.

Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation

Guest Lecture by Professor Mariana Ortega (Pennsylvania State University)

Deakin Downtown

AbstractThe aim of this talk is to show the importance of sensation/perception in María Lugones’s account of resistance as elaborated in her key work Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes. Inspired by a kinetic sculpture by Feliza Bursztyn, Ortega discloses Lugonesian resistance in relation to the notion of tantear, which is itself inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s account of ambiguity. The discussion highlights the intimate relation between perceiver and perceived, here conceived as perceiving in red. It also introduces the notion of aesthesic trespassing, a movement of resistance specifically prompted by artworks. Mariana Ortega (she/her) is Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of Carnalities, The Art of Living in Latinidad (Duke University Press, 2025) and In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self (SUNY Press, 2016). She is co-editor of Theories of the Flesh, Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation and Resistance (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader (SUNY Press, 2009). She is the founder and director of the Latina/x Feminisms Roundtable, a forum for Latina/x and Latin American feminisms.