“Their Spidery Self”: On Webs of Subject-Object Empathy in Bernardine Evaristo’s Fiction

Drawing on the theoretical premises of Anthropocene feminism, new materialist feminism and empathy studies, this paper represents an attempt to explore the mutually constitutive relations conjured in Bernardine Evaristo’s fiction between subjects and the object worlds they inhabit. Focusing on Lara (1997) and Girl, Woman, Other (2019) as examples of “fusion fiction,” the paper explores the ways in which a composite sense of agency is articulated between the human and the nonhuman, shaping what feminist thinkers from Rosi Braidotti to Jane Bennett envision as our posthuman horizons.

Floating Roots: Agnès Varda's Uncle Yanco

This article traces one source of Agnès Varda's artistic inspiration to Jean “Yanco” Varda, the subject of her 1967 short film Uncle Yanco (US/France). Jean Varda was a peripatetic artist who lived on a houseboat and was part of a bohemian circle that included Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Alan Watts, and other luminaries of the San Francisco counterculture. Both Vardas were gleaners and artists. The author argues that both saw the imagination as a place where matter and spirit were reconciled. The article builds on previous work about Varda's The Gleaners and I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, France, 2000), exploring Varda's materialist feminism and her use of earthly and tactile materials. The author focuses not only on matter but also on the imagination and the intangible images, colors, and forms that are prominent in her oeuvre, arguing that Yanco served as a muse to his niece.

Materialism, Matter, Matrix, and Mater

This chapter compares two strands of thought that experienced a difficult translation into the French context: new materialism (NM) and the gender debates within feminism. In this chapter, I analyse the different notions of material, materialism, or materiality at stake in various NM approaches. Following this, I show that socialist feminism, materialist feminism, and NM only share a rejection of postmodernism and anti-naturalism. I claim that the very different understandings of materialism within these feminisms must have contributed to this tepid reception of new materialism in France.

Q&A Session Following the Lecture: Materialist Feminism and Radical Feminism: Revisiting the Second Wave in the Light of Recent Controversies

Author(s): Nina Power et al. Title (English): Q&A session following the lecture: Materialist Feminism and Radical Feminism: Revisiting the Second Wave in the Light of Recent Controversies Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020) Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje Page Range: 36-39 Page Count: 4 Citation (English): Nina Power et al., “Q&A session following the lecture: Materialist Feminism and Radical Feminism: Revisiting the Second Wave in the Light of Recent Controversies,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2-3 (Winter 2020): 36-39. Author Biography Nina Power, Independent Researcher Nina Power is a philosopher and writer, and the author of many articles on politics, feminism and culture. She is the author of One-Dimensional Woman (2009) and the forthcoming What Do Men Want? (2021). She is currently teaching at Mary Ward and has previously taught at the University of Roehampton and many other institutions.

Against the grain? The craving for domestic femininity in a gender-egalitarian welfare state

This article aims to develop new conceptions of the psychosocial dynamics that drive the re-romanticization of domestic femininity in current financialized capitalism. Feminist scholars have described this heightened cultivation of mothering as a reparative move in response to irreconcilable tensions between cultural ideals of the ‘balancing mother’ and ‘lean-in femininity’. This article adds a materialist-psychosocial lens to these conceptions, to enhance understanding of what drives this craving for domestic femininity. Drawing on a free-association narrative interview study with couples in the financial elite in the comparatively gender-egalitarian Norwegian context, I describe a specific emotional mechanism that resists democratization of gender in this specific group. The interviews reveal a felt need to cultivate ‘the human side of things’ at safe distance from the competitiveness of ‘hard-core finance’. The Nordic earner–carer model with its entwinement of care and professional pursuits, cultivated by the more self-fulfilment-oriented parts of the professional middle-class appears not only unwanted but threatening. In my analysis, I retrieve and develop a psychoanalytically inspired historical-materialist feminism, one that perceives of the gendered division of work as a split in modes of focusing human energy. I suggest that the resurgent cultivation of domestic femininity is nurtured by a self-energizing antagonism between competitive and relational practices. I further argue that the cultivation of domestic femininity in these financial couples points to a potential antagonism between the democratization of love and the specific anxiety-driven competitiveness to which this financial-elite group may be particularly susceptible.

Comizi d’amore. L’amore e il femminismo materialista = Love rallies: Love and materialist feminism

Resumen: Durante il ventesimo secolo, un gruppo di autrici legate alla tradizione marxista e materialista promosse la creazione di un nuovo campo concettuale per interpretare l’amore come sentimento con una dimensione politica e così porre in discussione l’abituale tendenza a relegarlo alla sfera privata e all’intimità. Nell’articolo mi propongo di illuminare un momento fondamentale di questo processo di definizione del sistema interpretativo; nella prima parte esporrò le riflessioni di Aleksandra Kollontaj e, successivamente, presenterò alcune riflessioni sull’amore della radicale Shulamith Firestone come espressione di un’iniziale torsione concettuale che ha avuto ampie ripercussioni sui modi in cui le femministe materialiste di epoche successive teorizzarono una possibile ‘economia amorosa’ nel processo storico in cui le donne si definiscono come soggetti politici che lottano per la loro emancipazione.Attraverso l’analisi di Largo al Eros alato! di Kollontaj e di La Dialettica dei sessi di Firestone, opere legate alla tradizione materialista, voglio mostrare il ruolo che l’amore gioca, come sentimento vertebrato politicamente, nel processo di emancipazione delle donne. Queste prime intuizioni si rivelano particularmente fruttifere per comprendere alcuni degli sviluppi successivi della critica femminista all’’amore romantico’ (Illouz, Esteban, Herrera). Nei testi in questione l’amore è rappresentato come il fulcro emozionale sul quale si fonda e consolida il dominio patriarcale delle donne nell’economia capitalista e nella società di classe. Ciononostante Kollontaj riconosce l’amore come energia psico-sociale con un gran potenziale creativo. Queste due prospettive contribuiscono a far luce sul complesso ruolo che l’amore occupa nella riflessione femminista contemporánea e rivela una profonda trasformazione che si registra tra gli anni venti e gli anni sessanta nella forma in cui si concettualizzano le donne come gruppo specifico dentro la società divisa in classi (Kollontaj) e le donne come classe di per sé nel contesto della società patriarcale (Firestone).Parola chiave: Amore, Femminismo materialista, Kollontaj, Firestone, Classi.Abstract: In the 20th century, a number of authors engaged with the creation of a new conceptual framework to interpret love from a political perspective. They interpreted it as a political feeling and questioned the practice of relegating it to the private and intimate dimensions. In this article, light is shed on a foundational moment in the definition of this conceptual framework, looking first at Alexandra Kollontai’s reflections and then introducing Shulamith Firestone’s take on love, as the expression of a first theoretical turn. This initial subversión had a great impact on the forms in which the subsequent feminist generations theorised a political economy of love in the context of women’s struggles to become political subjects themselves and fight for their own emancipation.Through an analysis of Kollontai’s Largo all’Eros alato! and Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex, both linked to materialist traditions, we identify the role that, according to the authors, love – as a political feeling – plays in women’s struggle for freedom. These first intuitions have been particularly fruitful in framing feminist contemporary approaches to “romantic love” (Illouz, Esteban, Herrera). In Kollontai’s and Firestone’s texts, love is presented as an emotional and psychic pivot upon which patriarchal domination is founded and consolidated in bourgeois-capitalist societies. Nevertheless, Kollontai argues that love also has to be understood as a psycho-social feeling with a great potential to promote emancipatory relationships for women. These two perspectives also reveal the complex role that love plays in contemporary feminist reflection and the profound transformation that emerged, between the 1920s and the 1960s, in the forms in which women were represented as a specific group in a class society (Kollontai) or as a class per se under patriarchy (Firestone).Key words: Love, Materialist Feminism, Kollontai, Firestone, Class.

Materialist and queer feminism in France: Politics of Counter-Hegemony = Féminisme matérialiste et queer en France: Politiques contre-hégémoniques

This article questions the relationship between materialist feminism and queer movement in France. It addresses the pluralization of feminist emancipation in France since the mid-1990s in light of the conflict between materialist and queer feminisms, which started as the queer theory was developed in France in the nineties. The starting point is the hypothesis that the link between these two political theoretic discourses is possible since it actually takes places in the current “queer-feminist” movement’s activist practices. The article argues that this combination is meaningful and deserves to be better theorized because it carries with it a radical message of inclusiveness. The alliance of the two approaches questions the definition of the feminist subject, and especially the formulation of a political unity that is not essentialist. The article analyses the extent to which the counter-hegemonic approach provides with tools to answer this issue.Key words: Materialist feminism, queer movement, feminist subject, Politics of Counter-Hegemony.Résumé: Cet article interroge le rapport entre le féminisme matérialiste et le mouvement queer en France. Il envisage la pluralisation des formes d’émancipation féministe en France depuis le milieu des années 1990 à la lumière de la controverse entre les féminismes matérialiste et queer, qui a comencé quand la théorie queer s’est développée en France dans les années 1990. Mon hypothèse initiale postule que le rapprochement entre ces deux visions théorico-politiques est possible car il se pratique concrètement dans les mouvements queer-féministes actuels. Cet article affirme que cette articulation est pertinente et mérite ainsi d’être théorisée davantage car elle propose une forme d’inclusivité radicale. L’alliance entre ces deux courants questionne en effet la définition du sujet féministe, et, en particulier, une unité politique qui soit non essentialiste. Cet article analyse dans quelle mesure la stratégie contre-hégémonique donne des outils intéressants pour répondre à cet enjeu.Mots-clés: Féminisme matérialiste, mouvement queer, sujet féministe, contre-hégémonie.

Developing Transnational Methodologies in Feminist Studies: the relationship between postcolonial feminisms and new materialist feminism = Desarrollo de metodologías transnacionales en los estudios feministas: la relación entre los feminismos postcoloniales y el feminismo neo-materialista

The following article is an attempt to establish a constructive dialogue be­tween two of the leading feminist philosophical theories of our time, new materialist feminism and postcolonial feminisms. Despite the fact that new materialist feminism has claimed to share the same concerns of postcolonial feminisms, this paradigm in some cases has been un­appreciated among the postcolonial field, even though the two theories actually do have some common viewpoints, as I want to demonstrate. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to highlight the main standpoints of new materialist feminism, in relation with the theoretical positions of postcolonial feminism. In order to do so, I have engaged critically with Rosi Braidotti’s thought, putting it in dialogue with the critiques advanced by postcolonial feminist thinkers. After the analysis and the definition of new materialist feminism in the first section, and postcolonial feminism in the second, I then proceeded by envisaging a common ground for the two theories. The importance of this intercommunication is based on the idea that there can be no effective politics for new materialism if this theory doesn’t develop its ability to be transdisciplinar and intersectional. It also has to become capable of accounting for the dynamics of power at all levels and with different prospective, as a way to create new politics of identity and resistance. To answer to the challenges and paradoxes of our contemporary era the creation of a space for transnational actions is more effective than ever, as I want to attest.Palabras clave: Postcolonial Feminism, Neo-materialism, Feminist Philosophical think­ing, New Methodological Perspectives in Gender Studies. Resumen. El siguiente artículo es un intento de establecer un diálogo constructivo entre dos de las principales teorías filosóficas feministas de nuestro tiempo, el nuevo feminismo materialista y el feminismo poscolonial. A pesar del hecho de que el nuevo feminismo mate­rialista ha afirmado compartir las mismas preocupaciones de los feminismos poscoloniales, este paradigma en algunos casos no se aprecia en el campo poscolonial, aunque las dos teorías realmente tienen algunos puntos de vista comunes, como quiero demostrar. Por lo tanto, el objetivo de este artículo es destacar los principales puntos de vista del nuevo feminismo ma­terialista, en relación con las posiciones teóricas del feminismo poscolonial. Para hacerlo, me he comprometido críticamente con el pensamiento de Rosi Braidotti, poniéndolo en diálogo con las críticas formuladas por las pensadoras feministas poscoloniales. Después del análisis y la definición del nuevo feminismo materialista en la primera sección, y del feminismo posco­lonial en la segunda, procedí a prever un terreno común para las dos teorías. La importancia de esta intercomunicación se basa en la idea de que no puede haber políticas efectivas para el nuevo materialismo si esta teoría no desarrolla su capacidad de ser transdisciplinar e inter­seccional. También debe ser capaz de explicar la dinámica del poder en todos los niveles y con diferentes perspectivas, como una forma de crear nuevas políticas de identidad y resistencia. Para responder a los desafíos y las paradojas de nuestra era contemporánea, la creación de un espacio para acciones transnacionales es más efectiva que nunca, como quiero afirmar.Palabras clave: Feminismo poscolonial, neomaterialismo, pensamiento filosófico femi­nista, nuevas perspectivas metodológicas en los estudios de género.