African Women Writing Diaspora: Transnational Perspectives in the Twenty-First Century

Author(s):  
Kelsey Flint-Martin
Hypatia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 616-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Mchugh

By the turn of the twenty‐first century, women writing about electing to share their lives with female canines directly confront a strange sort of backlash. Even as their extensions of the feminist forms of personal criticism contribute to significant developments in theories of sex, gender, and species, they become targets of criticism as “indulgent” for focusing on their dogs. Comparing these elements in and around popular memoirs like Caroline Knapp's Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond between People and Dogs (1998) and Deirdre McCloskey's Crossing: A Memoir (1999), as well as academic studies like Alice Kuzniar's Melancholia's Dog: Reflections on Our Animal Kinship (2006) and Donna Haraway's When Species Meet (2007), this essay elaborates the ways in which living with and writing about female canine companions informs poststructuralist and feminist questions about the embodiment and performance of structures of authority, including those of academic writers, “dog‐mom” stereotypes, and reproductively silenced bodies. Situating these texts amid discussions of form in and around feminist/dog‐writing, I argue that together they move narrative beyond the abstract model of the lone “authoritative” human individual, reframing feminist politics as intra‐active, even trans‐species, from the ground up.


2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perri Six ◽  
Nick Goodwin ◽  
Edward Peck ◽  
Tim Freeman

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-73
Author(s):  
Eliza Preston

This article explores what the work of Sigmund Freud has to offer those searching for a more spiritual and philosophical exploration of the human experience. At the early stages of my psychotherapy training, I shared with many peers an aversion to Freud’s work, driven by a perception of a mechanistic, clinical approach to the human psyche and of a persistent psychosexual focus. This article traces my own attempt to grapple with his work and to push through this resistance. Bettelheim’s (1991) treatise that Freud was searching for man’s soul provides a more sympathetic lens through which to explore Freud’s writing, one which enabled me to discover a rich depth which had not previously been obscured. This article is an account of my journey to a new appreciation of Freud’s work. It identifies a number of challenges to Bettelheim’s argument, whilst also indicating how his revised translation allowed a new understanding of the relevance of Freud’s work to the modern reader. This account may be of interest to those exploring classical psychotherapeutic literature as well as those guiding them through that process.


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