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- Convenors:
-
JoAnn Conrad
(Diablo Valley College. Univ. of Iceland)
Rozemarijn van de Wal (Dutch Centre for Intangible Heritage)
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- Format:
- Panel+Roundtable
Short Abstract:
Gender ideologies permeate all aspects of social life, including disciplinary practices and discourses. This panel invites scholars to engage with feminist approaches as acts of un-writing, and to ask the different questions that emerge from the destabilization of conventional gender paradigms.
Long Abstract:
Un-writing has long been at the heart of feminist approaches to folklore, ethnology and anthropology. Emerging alongside the feminist movement, feminist approaches have shown how prevailing gender ideologies run through all aspects of social, institutional, legal, and academic life. A dismantling or ‘un-writing’ of these discourses has been one of feminism’s central concerns. What began as a process of adding the voices of those who have been silenced, has grown into a process of uncovering and questioning the unequal power relations that informed those narratives to begin with. These power relations are so common and self-evident that their dismantling requires a radically new perspective. Feminist theory offers a disruptive lens through which to dismantle the hegemonic patriarchal frameworks that permeate our everyday lives. Rather than merely making visible existing power mechanisms, feminist theory also challenges us to take our analyses further and to get at their inner workings and logic. It inspires us to do things differently, to question existing methodologies and theoretical approaches and to un-write disciplinary paradigms. How can feminist approaches help us un-write the narratives of our times? How do feminist approaches inspire us to ask different questions and what could these questions be? And how can we un-write the disciplinary paradigms that continue to marginalize feminist theory? This panel invites scholars to take up such questions, and to understand feminist approaches not just as acts of un-writing, but to reconceptualize the world around us. Panels will focus on theoretical and conceptual aspects. Roundtable on methodological approaches.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
My intention in this paper is to question how we choose whose voices we will present, give them the right to speak, and how archival material (folkloristic and non-folkloristic alike) can help us to eventually develop new feminist-oriented methodological and classification approaches.
Contribution long abstract:
Although research into personal narratives as life stories, oral autobiographies, or stories of personal experience, among others, have been affirmed and have become part of folkloristic genres since the 1960s and 1970s when they were admitted into the folkloristic canon, they still carry a certain research discomfort. The very (non-existent or undeveloped) terminology for (fragments of) life stories in folkloristics points to a gap that stems not only from narrow definitions of the discipline, but also from epistemological and methodological "blind spots" that I will address in my presentation. Namely, although we are somewhat sensitized to the asymmetrical power relations that ethnographic research carries, the focus of folkloristic research, even when we investigate personal stories, is selective – not all stories are worth recording, researching, or publishing, and although we research the so-called "vulnerable groups," we marginalize many others, as evidenced by the archival materials of the Institute of Ethnology and Folkloristics in Zagreb. Contemporary research that has focused on war ethnography, the ethnography of earthquakes and other disasters, migrants, and minority groups, although valuable and important, points to mechanisms for selecting who has the right to the story, which feminist criticism can perhaps deconstruct. Therefore, my intention is to question how we choose whose voices we will present, give them the right to speak, and how archival material (folkloristic and non-folkloristic alike) can help us to eventually develop new feminist-oriented methodological and classification approaches.
Contribution short abstract:
In this paper, I propose to re-member a writing technology from the feminist toolbox to shift epistemo-ontological grounds: interpunction.
Contribution long abstract:
A baseline of feminist epistemologies is the close connection between words and worlds. Words are not tools to describe and analyze worlds, words – especially metaphors – bring worlds into existence. Choosing a metaphor over another, verbs over nouns, poems over academic parlance became popular strategies to intervene into the textosterone (how Mary Ellen S. Capek called it once) of scientific production. In this paper, I would like to follow this thread in taking up the panel’s question of “how feminist approaches can help to un-write [or maybe rather re-write?] the narratives of our times?” To do so, I propose to re-member another writing technology from the feminist toolbox: interpunction. Feminists of the 1970s and 1980s had perfected the use of the potentialities of a small line such as the hyphen or a slash to shift epistemo-ontological grounds. Often overlooked today, punctuation marks – and not words – bring feminist worlds into being. To illustrate this, I will present first results of a year-long ongoing research project on the use of interpunctions in feminist theory.
Contribution short abstract:
Responding to the challenge of the panel call to “reconceptualize the world around us” through feminist approaches, this paper will reflect on the potential effects of a feminist critique of traditional commemorative practices and the possibilities of imagining new feminist public memoryscapes
Contribution long abstract:
Taking the recent (March 2024) statement by the Danish minister of culture that the lack of female statues in Copenhagen (and Denmark) is “crazy” as a point of departure, this paper will take a feminist approach to public commemorative practices and materializations.
Thinking through examples of traditional statues and monuments as well as experimental works of public commemoration the paper will present reflections on the potential effects of feminist approaches to public memoryscapes.
The ‘hegemonic discourses’ of the paper title are deliberately ambiguous, as the reflections in the paper will challenge both the dominance of male statues in public spaces and the practice of commemorating through materializations in traditional monumental statues. How can critical questions informed by feminist theory help us imagine new memoryscapes or new materialized discourses and commemorative practices in public spaces? Can Donna Haraway’s cyborgs who are irreverent to their problematic fathers help us reconfigure - or indeed redeem - the traditional statues and monuments, or would Audre Lorde’s call to dismantle the master's house by introducing new tools provide helpful imaginaries?
Contribution short abstract:
Masculinist/Colonialist narratives of the North excluded women even as they contributed to representations of the North. Focusing on women photographers and using feminist theory, this paper un-writes the dominant narratives to tell the untold stories of these women photographers and their images.
Contribution long abstract:
The double project of feminist theory and methodology is the historical recovery of the stories and work of women producers of culture that have been systematically erased, and the concomitant deconstruction of prevailing discourses and practices that such a recovery project can produce. This paper focuses on a particular group: women photographers who, in the early 20th century, worked in the far north of Norway and Sweden, producing photographic images that, in their mediated circulation, contributed to the representation and construction of the North.
Narratives of colonization of the North were generally subsumed into the social construction of masculinity that legitimized the exclusion of women in public discourse. In the narrativization of the photographic record of the North, it has thus been male photographers who have been written into (or indeed wrote themselves into) the heroic narrative of conquest. A revisionist narrative has subsequently emerged that constructs women photographers as gender “trailblazers,” a feminist fantasy narrative in which individual women appropriate the heroic persona -- acting alone and with impunity. In both narratives, the masculinist imperative is preserved, not challenged.
The real-life stories of the women photographers confound these simplistic scripts, as do their photographs. A closer look at the lives of several women photographers through the lens of feminist theory helps un-write the dominant narratives by using the untold stories of women photographers and their images in new stories that emerge from the intersection of nation, gender, race, and colonialism.
Contribution short abstract:
In Brooklyn, womxn securitize everyday objects like sunglasses as safety tricks, subverting gazes and redirecting expectations. By reclaiming and reframing the mythological figure of the trickster as a feminist trickster this paper un-writes narratives of womxn’s safety and security in urban spaces.
Contribution long abstract:
Through an ethnographic exploration of the use of everyday objects, like sunglasses and headphones, amongst womxn in Brooklyn, New York City, this paper explores the material culture of safety and security for gendered bodies in urban spaces. This paper argues that the securitization of such everyday objects function as safety tricks, moving beyond their functional use to instead subvert the male gaze and operate as surveillant and sensorial security objects. Such objects locate the body as a technology of security and a site of trickster performance, which this paper will also discuss through an exploration of the impact of eye contact and voice. Following Donna Haraway, this paper reconceptualizes the ‘trickster’ or ‘coyote’ as a figure for the creation and dissemination of feminist situated knowledges (1988), un-writing narratives of womxn as supposedly insecure and vulnerable and circulating oral knowledge of tricks to resist and redirect harmful gender norms and gender-based harassment and violence.
For example, by reclaiming the traditional mythological figure of the trickster as a feminist trickster, this paper explores the trans femme experience of harnessing the power of “cyborg” sunglasses, to watch and surveil others unnoticed on the street as a safety trick. This is powerful and transgressive in the context of mass surveillance of trans bodies in the US. Moreover, this paper demonstrates how such shared situated knowledges create fluid ‘safety assemblages’, of various intersecting actants, positionalities, places, and modalities, where agency flows relationally throughout, un-writing and reconceptualizing everyday security for gendered bodies in urban spaces.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper explores how tinkering with insulin, estrogen, and testosterone during menopause and andropause complicates biomedical sex and gender binaries. Drawing on ethnographic research with people living with Type 1 diabetes who undergo HRT, it unwrites metabolism as a site of queer disruptions.
Contribution long abstract:
Feminist approaches have long demonstrated how sex hormones are constructed as stable markers of sex, perpetuating gender binary frameworks (Oudshoorn, 1994; Fausto-Sterling, 1999; Roberts, 2007). Yet they inspire us to ask different questions: What happens when we unwrite hormones as isolated substances and reimagine their biosocial entanglements?
In bodies, hormones do not exist and act in isolation. For example, biomedical evidence points to hormonal effects of (declining) testosterone and estrogen during meno– and andropause on insulin resistance (Lambrinoudaki & Armeni, 2023) or insulin sensitivity (Lindheim, 1993). Drawing on my ongoing ethnographic research with medical professionals and individuals living with Type 1 diabetes who undergo hormone replacement therapy (HRT), I examine metabolic hormonal transitions (Nappi, et al., 2022) as experimental spaces where gendered hormonal categories can be unsettled. Using the notion of tinkering (Mol, et al., 2010) I attend to practices of hormonal tinkering to observe experimental spaces of insulin/HRT adjustments. How do practices of (self)care balance out different hormonal supplies that are meant to prevent, slow down, or tackle metabolic changes?
By attending to the entangled flows of insulin, testosterone, and estrogen as biosocial agents, I explore how these hormones co-enact (de)stabilizations of gendered embodiments and metabolic health. In dialogue with feminist science studies, I argue that such "hormonal tinkering" offers a lens to unwrite biomedical narratives that reinforce normative and binary understandings of gendered bodies. Rather than stabilizing bodies into normative ideals of health and ageing, these experimental practices open up possibilities for "doing" gendered metabolism in queer ways.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper questions whether the written birth plan has deviated from its intended use by current technocratic medical institutions. Additionally, it will explore whether writing a birth plan is ultimately beneficial for women in the context of the unpredictability of childbirth and labour.
Contribution long abstract:
Labour and childbirth are liminal spaces that are widely considered to be vulnerable and unpredictable experiences for women. The written birth plan has aimed to give women the power of choice and a semblance of control during these processes. However, I ask the question: ‘is a written birth plan actually in a woman’s best interest?’ Maternity services in the UK, and who has held the power of choice therein, have historically gone through several pendulum swings. After the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948, childbirth practice was heavily male led until the second feminist movement of the 1970s that demanded autonomy be placed back in the hands of women. This led to an increase in midwives and natural birth practices, and the creation of the written birth plan. While created with good intentions, there is often a difference between what looks good on paper versus the unwritten experience of real life. Grounded in my own ethnographic field work, and supported by current quantitative and qualitative medical research, I aim to evaluate whether creating a birth plan is ultimately beneficial for women within the reality that labour and birth experiences are innately unpredictable and rarely follow a script. Additionally, I want to explore whether the birth plan--once a counterhegemonic response to the patriarchal medical treatment of childbirth--has now itself become a tool used by technocratic medical institutions as a safe-guarding tick box exercise.
Contribution short abstract:
Women’s work has largely gone unseen in the historic record. This paper makes explicit the critical theories and practices, including arts-based approaches, that allow the author to understand and reveal the lived experiences of historic women and what lessons they may have for us today.
Contribution long abstract:
Unwriting and feminist theory are at the heart of my research; my work is impossible without them. My feminist lens requires autoethnographic engagement, ensuring that I ground myself in context, making my self-location/positionality explicit. Part of that positionality includes being a disabled academic who refuses to omit that identity from the discussion and who also refuses to be siloed into the realm of disability studies. My positionality, along with the nature of my work, is often disrupting to the inherent structure of the academy.
Broadly, I research meaning-making and personal sanctuary, especially in times of precarity. More specifically, my work weaves methodological and conceptual threads from the humanities (e.g folklore, social history, experimental archeology) with those from the social sciences (e.g. social work, sociology, psychology), engaging with the history of North Atlantic women, often through their material culture. I seek to reveal, and honour, women’s essential labour, which is too often disregarded. Where modern ideas aid me in understanding their perspectives and realities; the wisdom gleaned from their experiences can also assist us when faced with precarity today.
To that end, in this paper I shall present autoethnographic reflections from my research, sharing the critical theories and concepts, as well as the art-based unwriting practices, that underscore this work. Included will be some of the wisdom I have extrapolated from those I have studied and how that wisdom has something to offer everyone, especially in times of precarity.
Contribution short abstract:
The article explores art-based methods empowering Polish KGW women to share knowledge beyond government narratives. Collage reclaims their subjectivity, challenges exclusion in tradition, and resists political exploitation, fostering inclusive, feminist-aligned knowledge and agency.
Contribution long abstract:
The article explores the use of art-based methods to create and disseminate non-expert knowledge produced by women, focusing on its potential application within governmental institutions. The research centers on participatory arts-based methods that engage non-academic women as co-collaborators, providing a space for them to express ideas outside government frameworks. While feminist epistemology critiques women’s exclusion from mainstream knowledge production, integrating women into these contexts requires adapting research methods rather than superficial inclusion.
The study involved a Rural Housewives' Club (Koła Gospodyń Wiejskich, or KGW) in Poland, a historic association for rural women often linked with cooking and folklore. KGWs have become state-recognized ambassadors of tradition but lack agency in shaping knowledge about their roles and regional customs. Since 2023, public narratives about KGWs and traditions have largely been shaped by Poland’s right-wing government, which uses KGWs as political tools. This instrumentalization not only exploits intergenerational transmission of women’s cultural knowledge but also diminishes the agency of socially active women like KGW members. Even beyond politics, institutional discourse often overshadows the women’s lived experiences and insights about their practices.
KGW activists face dual exclusion: as non-academics and as contributors to tradition-related knowledge undervalued in institutional narratives. The article highlights visual arts methods like collage as egalitarian tools to reclaim women’s subjectivity, reach audiences beyond government influence, and foster empowering, contextually meaningful research. This approach situates KGW members’ knowledge as central, challenging their marginalization within traditional and feminist epistemologies.