Podcasts about queer phenomenology

I sort of feel like this guest needs no introduction, but that may be because, for me, she's such a powerful influence on thinking around affect, obviously, but also feminist politics, anticolonial resistance, the consequences of representation and misrepresentation. For people that don't know who she is, Sara Ahmed is the author of many widely read texts, from Queer Phenomenology, to Living a Feminist Life and The Cultural Politics of Emotion, to What's the Use? On the Uses of Use, to now, most recently, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way. The new book is an interesting experiment in an author thinking back through her work and theorizing the particular structuring principles that guided it, the core values, concepts and characteristic expressions that give it form. There is a fair bit of conversation in this interview about terms, specifically the term “kill,” for example, in “killjoy”--the extremity of the word and the kind of work that does. I also ask Ahmed about the inclusion of personal reflection in The Feminist Killjoy Handbook and we talk about the false distinction that gets made between the practice of “theory” and the lived experience of the theorist. I appreciated how open Sara was about her foundational sense of the value of killjoy solidarity, even as it is becoming frighteningly clear that this solidarity is required for all the wrong reasons: because rights are being rolled back, because oppression is intensifying and the vindictive forces of sexism and racism are differently emboldened today. There is even a discussion, here, of this seemingly novel, but actually quite old, concept of “cancel culture.” Ahmed explains why she is a “Roxane Gay superfan,” where she thinks the attacks on wokeness are coming from, and how they can be countered. I was most heartened maybe by her expression of killjoy solidarity with the movements for trans lives and for alleviation of the climate crisis. These are seemingly very different struggles, but in both instances there is a normative power to business as usual that is making life very dangerous for people at the margins.

Dreams really do come true! In this episode, I get to chat to the legendary originator of the feminist killjoy herself: Sara Ahmed. We talk about who the killjoy is, what she can do for us and why it is important that you can both be her and have her as your companion. Sara talks about the people who inspired her in her work on complaint, happiness, and killjoy feminism: readers, students, poets and fellow theorists like bell hooks, Judith Butler and Audre Lorde. And of course we also talk about killjoy joy.For some extra #killjoysolidarity, follow @saranahmed and @queerlitpodcast on Twitter or @saranoahmed and @queerlitpodcast on Instagram. Bonus: you'll get to see Sara's super sweet dogs Poppy and Bluebell! CW: discussions of misogyny, homophobia, and racism Referenced work by Sara Ahmed:The Feminist Killjoy Handbook (2023)Complaint! (2021) What's The Use (2019)Living a Feminist Life (2017)The Promise of Happiness (2010)Queer Phenomenology (2006)The Cultural Politics of Emotions (2004)Feministkilljoys.comSaranahmed.com Other References:Gay's The Wordbell hooksAudre LordeAma Ata Aidoo's Our Sister KilljoyJudith ButlerLauren BerlantHeidi Safia MirzaAudre Lorde's “A Litany for Survival” Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:1. Who or what is the feminist killjoy?2. Why is it important that the killjoy is both within and outside of us?3. What does Sara say about the role of poetry in her work? Which poet and thinker does she reference here?4. What does Sara say about killjoy joy? Have you ever experienced killjoy joy?5. Please read up on Sara's work on happiness. How has happiness been instrumentalised against women and minoritised people?6. Do you think you're a feminist killjoy? Why or why not?

In this episode, I explain Sara Ahmed's notion of Queer Phenomenology. If you want to support me, you can do that with these links: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theoryandphilosophy paypal.me/theoryphilosophy Twitter: @DavidGuignion IG: @theory_and_philosophy

In this episode, Nick J. Sciullo, Assistant Professor of Communications at Texas A&M University Kingsville, discusses his article "Queer Phenomenology in Law: A Critical Theory of Orientation" published in the Pace Law Review. He begins by discussing what phenomenology is, and why it's important to view human lives affected by legal processes through the lens of phenomenology. He specifically talks about the importance of identities to minoritarian groups and how people bring their identities to their interactions with the law. Drawing upon Marxist conceptions of a dancing table, Sciullo notes that our positionality and relationship to objects influences our experience with them. He reflects on how experiencing failures of accommodation can be learning experiences, and how minorities' experience can illuminate the law's failure to meet their needs. He concludes by noting what he hopes that scholars, listeners, and policymakers should take away from his article. Sciullo is on Twitter at @nickjsciullo.This episode was hosted by Luce Nguyen. She is on Twitter at @NguyenLuce. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theoryandphilosophyIn this episode, I turn my attention to Sara Ahmed's "Queer Phenomenology." This book can be regarded as Ahmed's attempt to perform a queering of phenomenology while simultaneously sketching what a queer phenomenology might look like. To do this, she traverses through the phenomenological tradition to craft her own version of phenomenology and then apply them to the domains of race and sexuality.

The lecture explores how complaint can be understood as a form of diversity work, as the work you have to do in order to make institutions more open and accommodating to others. The lecture draws on written and oral testimonies provided by those who have made complaints about racism, sexism, sexual harassment and bullying within universities. The lecture addresses the difficulty of making complaints and asks how and why complaints are blocked. The lecture shows how we learn about the institutional (as usual) from those who are trying to transform institutions. Sara Ahmed is an independent feminist scholar and writer. She has held academic appointments at Lancaster University and Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. She has recently completed a book What’s the Use? On the Uses of Use and has begun a new research project on complaint. Her previous publications include Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010), Queer Phenomenology (2006), The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2014, 2004), Strange Encounters (2000) and Differences that Matter (1998). She also blogs at www.feministkilljoys.com.

CRASSH Impact Lecture Series, Lent Term Speaker: Sara Ahmed Use is a small word with a lot of work to do, a small word with a big history. As Rita Felski describes in her introduction to a special issue of New Literary History on use, 'the very word is stubby, plain, workmanlike, its monosyllabic bluntness as bare and unadorned as the thing that it names' (2013, 5). This lecture explores different uses of use across a range of intellectual traditions including biology, design and psychology as well as education. It considers the role of utilitarianism in the forming of the modern university (with specific reference to London University, now UCL). One of the aims of the lecture will be to put ordinary use back into the archives of utilitarianism, showing how use in an 'inside job', how use shapes and moulds the university. Drawing on an empirical study of diversity work, first presented in On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), the lecture explores how and why diversity is 'in use' as a way of demonstrating how universities are occupied, how they are shaped by patterns of use that often remain unnoticed until they are contested. Sara Ahmed is an independent feminist scholar and writer. She has held academic appointments at Lancaster University and Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. She has recently completed a book What’s the Use? On the Uses of Use and has begun a new research project on complaint. Her previous publications include Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010), Queer Phenomenology (2006), The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2014, 2004), Strange Encounters (2000) and Differences that Matter (1998). She also blogs at www.feministkilljoys.com.

Remember Episode 51, when we made our way, blindfolded, around a room with nothing more than a cardboard tube to guide us? We delve deeper into the depths of phenomenology this week – almost literally – taking seriously Sara Ahmed’s description in her Queer Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty’s perspective, in which ‘bodies are submerged, such that … Continue reading Episode 53: Submerged in the social world