Remedios Zafra
Anti-intellectual rise and anti-feminist rise. Cultural work in the face of technopatriarchy and the reactionary risk of critical neutralization
Anxela Caramés, Carme Nogueira and Uqui Permui, Contenedor de feminismos (Feminisms Container), 2021. Museo Reina Sofía
Held on 19 Mar 2026
The José Luis Brea Chair, dedicated to reflecting on the image and the epistemology of visuality in contemporary culture, opens its program with an inaugural lecture by essayist and thinker Remedios Zafra.
“That the contemporary antifeminist upsurge is constructed as an anti-intellectual drive is no coincidence; the two feed into one another. To advance a reactionary discourse that defends inequality, it is necessary to challenge gender studies and gender-equality policies, but also to devalue the very foundations of knowledge in which these have been most intensely developed over recent decades—while also undermining their institutional support: universities, art and research centers, and academic culture.
Feminism has been deeply linked to the affirmation of the most committed humanist thought. Periods of enlightenment and moments of transition toward more just social forms—sustained by education—have been when feminist demands have emerged most strongly. Awareness and achievements in equality increase when education plays a leading social role; thus, devaluing intellectual work also contributes to harming feminism, and vice versa, insofar as the bond between knowledge and feminism is not only conceptual and historical, but also intimate and political.
Today, antifeminism is used globally as the symbolic adhesive of far-right movements, in parallel with the devaluation of forms of knowledge emerging from the university and from science—mistreated by hoaxes and disinformation on social networks and through the spectacularization of life mediated by screens. These are consequences bound up with the primacy of a scopic value that for some time has been denigrating thought and positioning what is most seen as what is most valuable within the normalized mediation of technology. This inertia coexists with techno-libertarian proclamations that reactivate a patriarchy that uses the resentment of many men as a seductive and cohesive force to preserve and inflame privileges in the new world as techno-scenario.
This lecture will address this epochal context, delving into the synchronicity of these upsurges through an additional parallel between forms of patriarchal domination and techno-labor domination. A parallel in which feminism and intellectual work are both being harmed, while also sending signals that in both lie emancipatory responses to today’s reactionary turns and the neutralization of critique. This consonance would also speak to how the perverse patriarchal basis that turns women into sustainers of their own subordination finds its equivalent in the encouraged self-exploitation of cultural workers; in the legitimation of affective capital and symbolic capital as sufficient forms of payment; in the blurring of boundaries between life and work and in domestic isolation; or in the pressure to please and comply as an extended patriarchal form—today linked to the feigned enthusiasm of precarious workers, but also to technological adulation. In response to possible resistance and intellectual action, patriarchy has associated feminists with a future foretold as unhappy for them, equating “thought and consciousness” with unhappiness—where these have in fact been (and continue to be) levers of autonomy and emancipation.”
— Remedios Zafra
Programme
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Participants
Remedios Zafra
is an essayist and Research Professor at the Institute of Philosophy of the Spanish National Research Council (IFS-CSIC), and a university professor of Art, Anthropology, and Politics of the Gaze. Her work is oriented toward the critical study of contemporary culture, identity and gender politics on networks, and current transformations of cultural and creative labor in a world mediated by screens. She is the author, among other works, of the essay collections El informe. Trabajo intelectual y tristeza burocrática (National Essay Prize 2025), El bucle invisible (Jovellanos International Essay Prize 2022), Frágiles. Cartas sobre la ansiedad y la esperanza en la nueva cultura, El entusiasmo. Precariedad y trabajo creativo en la era digital (Anagrama Essay Prize 2017 and Estado Crítico Prize 2017), Ojos y capital, (h)adas. Mujeres que crean, programan, prosumen, teclean (El Público a las Letras Prize 2013 and V Málaga Essay Prize), Un cuarto propio conectado, and Netianas. N(h)acer mujer en Internet (Caja Madrid International Essay Prize 2004). In addition to the awards cited above, her work has received the Maruja Mallo Prize for Thought 2025, the Meridiana Prize for Culture 2014, the Communication Prize of the Associació de Dones Periodistes de Catalunya 2010, the Research Prize of the Leonor de Guzmán Chair 2001, and the Carmen de Burgos Essay Prize 2000. She has directed critical projects and exhibitions on digital culture since 2001 and has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome and of the CSIC’s Women and Science Commission. She currently directs the research group “Gender and Technological Culture from Art and Representation.” www.remedioszafra.net
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This round-table discussion, which features the participation of Gerardo Mosquerahimself and an ensemble of art critics, thinkers and artists, for instance Fernando Castro Flórez, Diana Cuéllar, Lillebit Fadraga and René Francisco Rodríguez, will approach the multifaceted and extremely fertile work of Mosquera as a renowned master curator.
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18 MAY 2026
Museo del Prado and Museo Reina Sofía directors, Miguel Falomir and Manuel Segade, respectively,engage in conversation on Monday, 18 May in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Auditorium 400, in conjunction with International Museum Day 2026, the theme of which is “Museums Uniting a Dividing World”. The discussion, moderated by journalist and poet Antonio Lucas, will see the two heads of these major cultural institutions share their reflections on the role they play in today’s society.
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The activity will be live-streamed and is available at this link.
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