The RTG 3105 “Figurations of the Precarious in the Global South”, in cooperation with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies and the College of Fellows, warmly invites you to a Public Lecture by its current Mercator Fellow Rita Segato.
The renowned anthropologist and decolonial feminist will give her talk on
“The Elementary Structures of Violence. Gender Relations Between Anthropology, Psychoanalysis and Human Rights”
Date: Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Time: 6:15 p.m.
Venue: Alte Aula, Münzgasse 30

Rita Segato’s innovative theoretical thinking, her decentering of colonialities in academic knowledge production as well as the powerful poetics of disobedience of her writing convert her into one of today’s key intellectual voices within the context of Theories from the South. This is why the RTG 3105 “Figurations of the Precarious in the Global South” with its focus on the embodiment of precarity via gender violence and racism decided to invite her as its first Mercator fellow. She held a masterclass on "Introduction to Discomforting Thinking: Decolonial Feminist Takes on Patriarchy and Race" from June 15 to June 18, 2026. The title of her talk presented in Tübingen is also the title of one her most important books that is going to be published in German by July.
About the lecture: 
Rita Segato analyses gender-based violence and the fundamental structures of violence based on her own anthropological research on rape and femicide and theoretical perspectives from Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan. Her thinking on gender-based violence stands out because she brings gender analysis to the center of the contemporary political scene avoiding the usual ghettoization of the subject and transforming patriarchy into the platform replicated in all other strata of oppression and exaction of surplus value. “The Elementary Structures of Violence” is a groundbreaking analysis of the colonial influence on contemporary gender relations.

About Rita Segato:
Rita Segato, born in 1951 in Buenos Aires, is a renowned Argentinean anthropologist and feminist activist, professor em. of the Department of Anthropology at Universidad de Brasilia, holder of the Chair for Discomforting Thinking (Cátedra Rita Segato de Pensamiento Incómodo) at the National University of San Martín (UNSAM), Argentina and of the Chair for Thinking in Conversation (Cátedra Rita Segato "Pensar en conversación") at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. She has received, in recent years, numerous degrees honoris causa from European and Latin American universities as well as several other important awards. She is one of the most influential contemporary political thinkers in the field of decolonial feminism from Latin America who explores the structures of patriarchal oppression on a global dimension and approaches the phenomena through their often invisible or hidden structural groundwork.
We hope you will join us for what promises to be a stimulating talk. 

The teams of the RTG 3105, the ICGSS and the College of Fellows

Poster