Once More With My Sistren: Black Feminism and the Challenge of Object Use

Lewis, Gail

doi:10.1177/0141778920944372

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Stories of inheritance and descent are bound up in European narratives of evolution, class and the circulation and inheritance of wealth. In the UK context, for example, working-class histories, histories of colonisation and slavery (McClintock 1995) and contemporary kinship stories from Black and Asian diasporas (Puar, 2007;Gunaratnam, 2014) challenge heteronormative assumptions that put biology at the centre (Lewis, 2019(Lewis, , 2020. In the context of scholarship in the USA, Black and indigenous feminism (Gumbs et al, 2016;Tallbear, 2018) and family abolitionism (O'Brien, 2019) also challenge heteronormative genetic kinship narratives.…”

Section: Enter Technoscience (Again)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Queering genealogies: introduction to the special section

Reed

O’Riordan

2022

Feminist Theory

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This special section of Feminist Theory explores the theme of 'Queering Genealogies'. It brings together work which explores intersections of queering, queerness, biotechnology, kinship relations, genealogy and intergenerational relations. It unites two areas of study: queer kinship studies; and queer science studies. The section was edited by Dr Elizabeth Reed and Dr Kate O'Riordan, and our focus is on queer family-making, kinship relations, genealogies and networks. The scope of the articles collected here ranges from biotechnologies such as DNA tests, IVF, gamete donation and surrogacy, to digital media platforms that facilitate new strategic, transitory and lasting relationships and make experiences of relation, genealogy and kinship. It critically engages with the ways in which kinship, genealogy and generational connection and traditions might be queered. The section contributes to a growing field and intervenes in this work of queer intellectual kinship-making through publishing research which bridges disciplinary areas and creates links between theoretical approaches.In this introduction, we reflect on some of the elements that inform the curation of this section. These include ways of making queer kin through media-making, fictional forms, critical theory, ethnographic and empirical work and intellectual community. Two projects led by the authors at earlier points orientate these reflections. Both projects employed similar methodological approaches, examining media representations and interviewing participants. Firstly, Reed's 2013-2016 research project 'Making Queer Families: Identity, LGBTQ Parents, Media, and Cultural Representation'. This was an extensive piece of research, conducted over three years, that examined media representations and the role of media in the lives of queer families. The research combined media analysis with interviews to examine the ways in which media is central to the identity

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Section: Enter Technoscience (Again)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Queering genealogies: introduction to the special section

Reed

O’Riordan

2022

Feminist Theory

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“…Feminist Review ( FR ) editors Nydia A. Swaby and Amber Lascelles met at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, Brixton, London in February 2023 to record a conversation exploring Black feminism as an ‘object’ (Lewis, 2020) in our writing and research. This dialogue reflects on the journal’s Black feminist genealogies, our reasons for joining the editorial board, FR ’s move to 198 Contemporary, how we navigate Black feminist epistemologies and how community and care influence the journal and shape our writing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black feminist texts, presences, methods: a dialogue

Lascelles,

Swaby

2023

Feminist Review

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Feminist Review (FR) editors Nydia A. Swaby and Amber Lascelles met at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, Brixton, London in February 2023 to record a conversation exploring Black feminism as an 'object' (Lewis, 2020) in our writing and research. This dialogue reflects on the journal's Black feminist genealogies, our reasons for joining the editorial board, FR's move to 198 Contemporary, how we navigate Black feminist epistemologies and how community and care influence the journal and shape our writing. We sat in the new office, surrounded by FR journal back issues and inspiring Black feminist texts. Quotations from these Black feminist texts, and others we think with, are interspersed throughout the piece to act as a 'presence' (Lewis, 2017). declarations of presenceHere then is a declaration of presence, not just an unwanted independence, through the double and inseparable vectors 'black' and 'female' proclaimed as a desire for recognition and space in a multitude of struggles that have a history of erasing, marginalising and even denouncing some aspect of who she is and might become.

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A psychoanalytic pedagogy for apocalyptic times

Merson

2024

Appl Psychoanal Studies

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When I was young, my family was gifted a cat by a family friend. This was fortunate for me, as I'd been begging my parents for a cat friend for a good portion of my short life. The first time I met this cat, he was on my parents' bed, pleasantly lying there. As I approached him and started to pet him at the gentle instruction of my parents, the cat started to make a sound-a low rumble deep from his belly that I couldn't place. I felt fear. I recoiled my hand, and asked, "Why is he growling at me?" My parents laughed and said, "He's purring! It means he's happy." The soft cat was warm, then angry, then happy, in my little mind. But this has stayed with me. Now, when I face things that seem scary, I think: What if this scary thing is simply a house cat, a creature who needs some attention? What if I am fearful of something simply because I cannot place it or don't recognize it? Is this bringing up fear because it is new, and stirs my own anxieties of the mortality that monsters under (or on) the bed might bring? I will get to the obviously Oedipal elements of this primal scene with my cat later. For now, I will say that I came to psychoanalysis out of a deep and lifelong curiosity about what lies beneath the visible, orderly, sensible, legible aspects of life. As the filmmaker Werner Herzog reminds us, "what would an ocean be without monsters lurking in the dark?" Psychoanalysis has offered me a way to face that which has been made monstrous by normative society.While psychoanalysis can be a praxis of play, when we play, as Lewis (2020) notes, we risk finding monsters: in ourselves, in others, in the social surround. "Play," she says, riffing off Winnicott (1971), "helps facilitate the move away from a fantasy of omnipotent control of the object/external world and toward recognition and acceptance of the object's autonomous and separate existence in the external world. Yet it is always in-process, never a fully completed achievement, and thus it always carries the potential to turn into a nightmare world full of monsters (p. 11)." Perhaps Lewis' statement illuminates that it is a need for certainty, control, containment, and normativity that creates the monsters out of sleeping cats. Much can be, and has been, made of the "primal scene" of my parents' bedroom and the potential monsters lurking there (anxieties about the "pussy" on the bed, and whether it likes me or hates me, for one). At the same time, the meaning I have made from that particular scene has to do with what scares me about growing up and changing, and the ways in which I might utilize a variety of defenses out of fear of what is emergent in my own becoming, but with which I have not yet built a relationship.What is so monstrous about encountering or building something new? Is the fear actually anxiety about becoming irrelevant, outdated, and disposable? Might that anxiety stem from living in a culture which functions

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Once More With My Sistren: Black Feminism and the Challenge of Object Use

Cited by 8 publications

References 35 publications

Queering genealogies: introduction to the special section

Queering genealogies: introduction to the special section

Black feminist texts, presences, methods: a dialogue

A psychoanalytic pedagogy for apocalyptic times

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