When We Collide

• In Event: With A Little Help From My Friends: Queer(ing) Friendship, the Praxis of Community Care

Abstract

Using the concepts of authenticity and friendship as an episteme, in this paper I trace the often messy, difficult process of building feminist friendships as one that can illuminate modern liberalism’s instrumentalization of the Asian American identity as a tool for upholding logics of individualism that, through a divide-and-rule politic, limit collaboration across difference. I argue that friendship as an analytic can help us rupture such pre-existing social boundaries to develop new modes of collaborative resistance that can also reshape the potential to bridge transnational feminist alliances.

Presenter

• Jainey JungYeon Kim, Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies; University of Washington