As part of the GRIN workshops, you are invited to attend a lecture by Emanuela Carta (Graz University of Technology, KU Leuven) entitled “Rethinking Consent as Affective Approval”. The lecture will take place on February 13, 2026, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., in room 422 of Department of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal, located at 2910 Édouard-Montpetit Boulevard, Montreal, Quebec.

The conference will also be broadcast on Zoom via the following link (meeting ID: 266 439 5811; passcode: 454185).

Summary

Recent debates in feminist philosophy have expressed growing dissatisfaction with the dominant understanding of consent as a form of permission. While some have responded by supplementing consent with additional normative criteria for ethical intimate encounters, others have explored the possibility of reconceptualizing consent.

In this talk, I pursue this latter strategy by developing an account of consent as affective approval: a sui generis emotion experienced upon recognizing something as right. On this view, consent is not primarily a speech act or a decision, but a form of emotive endorsement, which should not be confused with enthusiasm or desire.

I then explore the relationship between affective approval, agency, and autonomy, suggesting that the proposed affective account of consent may help secure the possibility of consent under conditions of partial autonomy.