panel 13Making Kin and Taking Care through Embodied Aesthetic Practice
trans poetics of care and kinship
Robin Steve
Trans poetics, as defined by Rebekah Edwards, “refers to the art and the labor of transgender poets, and it refers to diverse interpretative and compositional strategies attentive to relational movements between/across/within linguistic, embodied, affective, and political domains” (2014, p. 252). A distinctive feature of trans poetics is then a deep relationality, its existence at the juncture and intertwinement of different domains. Such relationality is evident in how trans poetry and poetics have become more firmly established in the past decade through projects centred on trans circles of care and belonging, such as the 2013 anthology Troubling the Line and the 2019 anthology We Want It All. Trans poetics have also “typically foregrounded the body” (Abi-Karam & Gabriel, 2020, p. 2), which is both the means of interactions with what is outside one’s own body and the means through which poetry is generated. This paper aims to connect these two necessary elements of trans poetics – relationality and the body – and to analyse how webs of care within trans circles can expand to care for the environment around us. The webs of care between trans people and with the environment also represent a further way to foreground the trans body in its concrete existence with(in) nature and between individuals, so that embodiment can be found in such care and in nature. Starting with a discussion of how issues of care and collectivity shape trans poetry and poetics and trans relationality alike, this paper will argue that the trans focus on care and kinship generates an enmeshed and transindividual embodiment and existence. Analysing poems including Oliver Baez Bendorf’s “T4T” and Andrea Abi-Karam’s “THE PARALLEL BETWEEN BODY AND EARTH,” this paper will examine the possibilities opened by human-human interactions and human-environment interactions to reach a more expansive understanding of care.
References
Abi-Karam, A. & Gabriel, K. (2020). Making love and putting on obscene plays and poetry outside the empty former prisons. In A. Abi-Karam & K. Gabriel (Eds), We want it all: An anthology of radical trans poetics (pp. 1-7). Nightboat Books.
Edwards, R. (2014). Trans-poetics. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1(1-2), 252-253.
Robin Steve is a PhD student at University College Dublin and a board member of The Trans* Research Association of Ireland (TRAI). Their research, funded by the Irish Research Council, examines, through creative and critical praxis, the intersections between trans poetics, trans ecologies, and trans temporalities. Their poetry has been published on Honest Ulsterman, Abridged, Impossible Archetype, and ANMLY. Their research interests include trans studies, poetry, horror studies, and environmental humanities.
How Can Literature Care and Repair our Relationships? Saving the World According to G. by Etela Farkašová
Adriana Jesenková
If we consider the education of philosophy as caring for a good life, and care for a good life as an art (ars vivendi), then the use of art as both a tool and an expression of philosophical content should be an integral part of philosophy education. The novel Saving the World According to G. (2002/2020) by the Slovak philosopher and writer Etela Farkašová addresses the question of caring for the world and the interconnection of practices and relations of care in the micro and macro worlds. Its protagonist G. sees her mission in saving the world through cleaning. She believes that everything is fatally connected with everything and the things we do on a small scale – in the private space of our everyday lives – impacts a more substantial, even global context. The need to cope with the constant changes of mutually interconnected worlds and the uncertainty and anxiety that arise as consequences, poses challenges not only for literature but also for philosophical reflection. The lack of critical understanding of these phenomena, and the resulting inability to respond adequately to them in everyday personal relationships and public life, contributes to the current erosion of social integrity in particular contexts. In a polarized society, marked by intergenerational gaps and misunderstandings, our everyday capacity for solidarity is under threat. Reading and analysing Farkasova's novel helps us and our students understand why its heroine G. – and perhaps our parents, neighbors, or fellow citizens – think, decide, and act similarly or differently from us, and why she or we may fail in caring better for our world.
Adriana Jesenková is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia. Her research focuses on feminist moral philosophy and the investigation of power, care, and justice relations in social practice, with an emphasis on the field of education, especially ethics education. She is a member of the feminist organization EsFem, where as a researcher she participated in the research of several qualitatively designed projects focusing on gender aspects of education. She is the author of the monograph Ethics of Care (2016), the book chapter “Deficit of Democratic Care in the Educational System in Slovakia” in the edited volume Care Ethics, Democratic Citizenship, and the State (2020) and the chapter “Care, the Sacred, and Sex Education in Slovakia” in the edited volume Care Ethics, Religion, and Spiritual Traditions (2022).
Painting with Care: A Journey of Embodied Aesthetic Practice
Jo Voysey
The notion of healing as an innate part of the art-making process has been an established practice since the 20th century. More recently some contemporary artists are exploring how artmaking offers more-than-human possibilities of peace, healing, care, and repair. This presentation focuses on the affordances of painting as a medium, material form, and process of mark-making dealing with the impending planetary crisis. In particular, the paper refers to specific artists who use painting to work through collective and personal experiences of trauma without having to depict specific bodies or narratives explicitly. To begin, the paper refers to the South Korean artist group, Dansaekhwa, who, in response to political turmoil in Korea during the 1970s, developed an art form as both a physical practice, which entails repetitive multiplicative actions, and as a form of spiritual and emotional practice. The paper then moves on to South African artist Asemahle Ntlonti who turns to artmaking as a quest for peace in response to her own desire for freedom from past trauma and political violence. Using layers of paint, paper, and embroidered thread, Ntlonti arranges, glues, and stitches together materials in an act of repair that evoke the ties that bind us to one another and the healing that comes after brokenness. Finally, I discuss those moments in my own painting practice where I touch on possibilities for healing through a process of co-affective aesthetic wit(h)nessing (Ettinger, 1999).
Reference
Ettinger, B. L. (1999). Traumatic wit(h)ness-thing and matrixial co/inhabit(u)ating. Parallax, 5(1), pp. 89–98.
Jo Voysey is a visual artist, painting lecturer at Stellenbosch University, and lecturer of history and theory of design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa. Her artistic-research practice explores how artmaking offers more-than-human possibilities of peace and healing through a post-philosophical feminist new materialist frame. She is currently registered for a PhD at the University of Johannesburg. Her latest exhibitions include curating Three Way, KZNSA (2020) and Remembering, KZNSA (2021), and a solo exhibition, Never Trust a Balancing Rock, National Gallery of Bulawayo (2019).
Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
Contact info Louis van den Hengel
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