Incarnating the Mother: Illogical Conceptions of Generation in Postqualitative Feminist Epistemology

• In Event: The “Placetimematter” of Generation in Feminist Qualitative Research

Abstract

The purpose of my presentation is to consider the metaphoric models of generation which might characterise the emergence of an involvement with the writings of an Australian post-qualitative feminist in the field of place studies. The broader purpose is to suggest the conceptual expansions afforded by what I term connections of illogic that can be drawn to reconstruct the meaning of generation in feminist epistemology.

The theoretical framework is that of genealogical models within post-structural feminist theory (Van der Tuin, 2009). Genealogy is of particular concern for this framework, given it positions itself in the first place as a critique and disavowal of linear, binary and progressivist forms of logic and conception “in a quest for overcoming dualism and reconnecting life and thought” (Braidotti, 2002).

My investigation is organized around a schema of crisis points or libidinal positions:

- The point of movement
- The point of intolerability
- The point of no return
- The edge place

In analysing the data I use the notion of feminist post-structuralist thought as incarnated in being passed between the bodies of female thinkers and writers through exchanges I characterise as libidinal emergencies.

The data used are my own writings, journals and memories associated with my initial encounters with the thinking and writings of Margaret Somerville (1999; 2007; 2010; 2013) over the period 2009-2011. My reflections on this period reveal how new thought arises from a complex interchange between libido in life and the living energy embodied in the rich tradition of literature emanating from feminist poststructuralist writers.

From this reflection I posit that there is a particular kind of derailing power in new thought in this field that coalesces instantaneously in the being of a reader out of a hidden and suspended field of atomised implications, memories, sufferings, dilemmas that the reader herself carries, and that this precipitating passing of energy into her body flashes into and illuminates past, present and future, thereby occurring at all times and in all places simultaneously for that individual reader, a process far more like an incarnation than a construction. In this way, a susceptible reader re-creates the words of the writer in her own body in ways which give the writing a constantly regenerated new life. In Somerville’s words it is literally an intercellular material exchange which evades all linearity of conception of the relationship between space time and matter.

The significance of the study lies in its contribution to theoretical reflection on an Australian feminist writer in the field of place studies, both an area and a writer which are long overdue for serious consideration within the academy of their place in the development of poststructuralist feminist thinking, particularly as it relates to our common hopes for a sustainable future for the planet we currently dominate. Significance of the paper also relates to the claiming of a wider scope of metaphoric models for the concept of generation in feminist epistemology.

Author

• Sue Collins, Federation University Australia