ONLINE Collectivity and Care: Feminist Duration Reading Group

Led by Sabrina Fuller, Taey Iohe, Helena Reckitt, and Dot Jia Zhihan of the Feminist Duration Reading Group.

To care can feel good; it can also feel awful. It can do good; it can oppress. Its essential character to humans and countless living beings makes it all the most susceptible to convey control. But what is care? Is it an affection? A moral obligation? Work? A burden? A joy? Something we can learn or practice? Something we just do?
     – Maria Puig De La Bellacasa, ‘The Disruptive Work of Care,’ in Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds, 2017

The most anti-capitalist protest is to care for another and to care for yourself. To take on the historically feminized and therefore invisible practice of nursing, nurturing, caring. To take seriously each other’s vulnerability and fragility and precarity, and to support it, honor it, empower it. To protect each other, to enact and practice community. A radical kinship, an interdependent sociality, a politics of care.
     – Johanna Hedva, ‘Sick Woman Theory,’ 2016

Healing is transformation, it’s becoming, it’s blooming, it’s being home and whole within one-self in order to be home and whole within our worlds.
     – Tabita Rezaire, ‘Decolonial Healing*: In Defense of Spiritual Technologies,’ 2019

This meeting focuses on three texts which explore the intersections of care and collectivity, symbiosis and healing.  Following introductions from the organisers and amongst participants, we will divide into small break-out groups where we will read out loud, one person and one paragraph at a time, from selected extracts.

We will then reconnect to share our insights into the readings and their relevance for current work around collective and self-care centred on values of reciprocity and recognition, creativity, equity, and interdependence.

Readings
> Johanna Hedva, ‘Sick Woman Theory,’ Mask, 2016
> Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, ‘Thinking with Care,’ in Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds, 2017
> Tabita Rezaire, ‘Decolonial Healing*: In Defense of Spiritual Technologies,’ in The SAGE Handbook of Media and Migration, 2019

Selections from readings will be sent to everyone who registers, ahead of time. There is no need to read in advance as we will do so together during the session.

About the Feminist Duration Reading Group
Since 2015 the Feminist Duration Reading Group has explored under-known feminisms outside the dominant Anglo-American canon. Its monthly meetings, open to all, have taken place in art galleries, seminar rooms, community centres, parks, and living rooms in London, Birmingham, Bexhill-on-Sea, Toronto, and Penzance, as well as online. The FDRG is led by a Working Group of five and a Support Group of seven. The group welcomes feminists of all genders and generations. www.feministduration.com

About the Kaleidoscope Network
This event is organised by Eastside Projects for the  Kaleidoscope Network – a collaboration between Spike Island (Bristol) Eastside Projects (Birmingham), Primary (Nottingham) and The NewBridge Project (Newcastle). Formed in response to a need for mutual support, the network has come together as a way to share resources, increase what each partner is able to offer and create new connections between communities of artists.

As an EOP Member, you are also automatically a Kaleidoscope Network member. Check below for more upcoming events organised by our partners that you can also attend for free.

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Image Credit: Sabrina Fuller, Disorderly Paradise, 2020