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Abstract
Approaching femme as a figuration, a political fiction that merges critique of the here-and-now with an ethics of affirmation, driven by desires for an elsewhere/otherwise, the article engages in an experimental – autophenomenographic, poetic, and philosophical – figuring process. The aim is to foreground critical-affirmative potentials of femme and femme-inism in queer and posthumanist perspectives. Starting from a poem that spells out the author’s process of becoming-femme, the article establishes a conversation between the poem’s personal framing and theoretical interventions, selected from archives of critical posthumanist, queer, philosophy in the feminine, transgender and femme theory. The figuring process is based on a vignette methodology. Each of the poem’s stanzas give rise to a vignette, linking the poetic images with resonating theory fragments stitched together to an assemblage. Rather than as an attempt to synthesize a seamlessly interwoven theorization of femme, the figuring process is a meditation on the assembling of unruly fragments.
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Acampora, Ralph R. (2006). Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body, Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press.
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Allen-Collinson, Jacquelyn (2010). Running Embodiment, Power and Vulnerability: Notes towards a Feminist Phenomenology of Female Running. In E. Kennedy and P. Markula, eds., Women and Exercise: The Body, Health and Consumerism. London: Routledge, pp. 280–98.
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Anzaldúa, Gloria E. (2015). Light in the Dark/Luz en Lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Reality, Spirituality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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Bennett, Jane (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
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Braidotti, Rosi and Butler, Judith (1994). Feminism by Any Other Name: An Interview. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6 (2–3), 28–61.
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Braidotti, Rosi (2002). Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
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Braidotti, Rosi (2006). Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
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Braidotti, Rosi (2022). Posthuman Feminism. Cambridge UK: Polity.
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Cvetkovich, Ann (1995). Recasting Receptivity: Femme Sexualities. In: Karla Jay, ed., Lesbian Erotics. New York, NY: New York University Press, pp. 125–46.
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Dahl, Ulrika (2012). Turning Like a Femme: Figuring Critical Femininity Studies. nora: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 20 (1), 57–64.
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Dahl, Ulrika (2014). Skamgrepp: Femme-inistiska essäer. Stockholm: Leopard.
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Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1988). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, New York, NY and London: Continuum.
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Duggan, Lisa, and Hunter, Nan D. (2006). Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture. New York, NY: Routledge.
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Fuchs, Sabine, ed. (2020). Femme/Butch. Dynamiken von Gender und Begehren. Berlin: Querverlag.
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Göttner-Abendroth, Heide (1980). Die Göttin und ihr Heros: Die matriarchalen Religionen in Mythos, Märchen und Dichtung, München: Frauenoffensive.
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Grosz, Elizabeth (1994). The Hetero and the Homo: The Sexual Ethics of Luce Irigaray. In: Carolyn Burke, Naomi Schor, and Margaret Whitford, eds., Engaging with Irigaray: Feminist Philosophy and Modern European Thought. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, pp. 335–51.
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Haraway, Donna (1992). The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others. In: Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies. New York, NY and London: Routledge, pp. 295–337.
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Hoskin, Rhea A. (2019). Femmephobia: The Role of Anti-Femininity and Gender Policing in lgbtq+ People’s Experiences of Discrimination. Sex Roles 81: 686–703.
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Hoskin, Rhea A. (2020). “Femininity? It’s the Aesthetic of Subordination”: Examining Femmephobia, the Gender Binary, and Experiences of Oppression Among Sexual Minorities. Archives of Sexual Behavior 49: 2319–39.
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Irigaray, Luce ([1974]/1985). Speculum of the Other Woman. Translated by Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.
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Irigaray, Luce ([1977]/1985). This Sex Which is Not One. Translated by Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.
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Irigaray, Luce ([1980]/1993). Body against Body: In Relation to the Mother. In: Luce Irigaray, ed., Sexes and Genealogies. Translated by Gillian C. Gill. New York NY: Columbia University Press, pp. 8–21.
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Irigaray, Luce (2004). Animal Compassion. In: Peter Atterton and Matthew Calarco, eds., Animal Philosophy: Ethics and Identity. London and New York, NY: Continuum, pp. 195–201.
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Irigaray, Luce (2013). In the Beginning She Was. London: Bloomsbury.
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Irigaray, Luce and Marder, Michael. (2016). Through Being Vegetal. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
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Johnson, Mykel (1992). Butchy Femme. In: Joan Nestle, ed., The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader. Boston, MA: Alyson Publications, pp. 395–398.
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Kristeva, Julia (1980), Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, trans. T. Gora, A. Jardine and L.S. Roudiez, New York: Columbio University Press.
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Lykke, Nina (1987). Skønheden, godheden og teknologiuhyret. In Mette Bock, Hanna Hvidtfeldt and Lone Kalstrup, eds., Kvindespind. Kønsfilosofiske essays. Århus: Philosophia, pp. 158–186.
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Lykke, Nina (1994). Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science. In: Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti, eds., Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine and Cyberspace. London: Zed Books, pp. 13–29.
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Lykke, Nina (2018). When Death Cuts Apart: On Affective Difference, Compassionate Companionship and Lesbian Widowhood. In: T. Juvonen and M. Kohlemainen, eds., Affective Inequalities in Intimate Relationships. New York, NY and London: Routledge, pp. 109–25.
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Lykke, Nina (2019). Co-Becoming with Algae: Between Posthuman Mourning and Wonder in Algae Research. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 5 (2). https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v5i2.31922.
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Lykke, Nina (2022). Vibrant Death: A Posthuman Phenomenology of Mourning. London: Bloomsbury.
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Lykke, Nina (2024). Contemplating Life, Death and Time Together with Diatoms. In: Yogi Hale Hendlin, Johanna Weggelaar, Natalia Derossi, and Sergio Mugnai, eds., Being Algae: Transformations in Water, Plants. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, pp. 67–91.
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Lykke, Nina (Forthcoming a). Contemplating Suffocation through the Lens of Shared Cross-species Vulnerabilities. In: Magda Gorska and Milica Trakilovic, eds., Social and Political Suffocations. London and New York: Routledge.
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Lykke, Nina (Forthcoming b). Can Middling Foster New Feminist Coalitions? On Transgender, Race and Ethics of Unease. In: Tara Mehrabi, Milla Tiainen, Katve-Kaisa Kontturi and Taru Leppänen, eds., New Materialism and Intersectionality: Making Middles Matter. London: Routledge.
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Lykke, Nina (Forthcoming c). Philosophy in the Feminine and Femme Theory: Intergenerational Perspectives on Non-Normative Feminine Rebellion. In: Athena V. Colman and Laura Roberts, eds., Irigaray’s Speculum of the Other Woman at 50. Cambridge Philosophical Anniversaries Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Lykke, Nina, Aglert, Katja, and Henriksen, Line (2024). Feminist Reconfigurations of Alien Encounters: Ethical Co-Existence in More-than-Human Worlds. London: Routledge.
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Lykke, Nina, and Marambio, Camila (Forthcoming). Cancer Ecologies: A Queer Femme Proposition. London: Bloomsbury.
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MacCowan, Lyndall (1992). Re-collecting History, Renaming Lives: Femme Stigma and the Feminist Seventies and Eighties. In: Joan Nestle, ed., The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader. Boston, MA: Alyson Publications, pp. 299–328.
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Margulis, Lynn, and Sagan, Dorion (1997). Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
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Neimanis, Astrida (2017). Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.
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Nestle, Joan, ed. (1992). The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader. Boston, MA: Alyson Publications.
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Schaeffer, Felicia Amaya (2018). Spirit Matters: Gloria Anzaldua’s Cosmic Becoming across Human/Nonhuman Borderlands, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 43 (4): 1005–29.
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Shelley, Mary ([1818]/1968). Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus: Three Gothic Novels. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
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Spinoza, Benedict de ([1677]/1996), Ethics. London: Penguin.
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Stryker, Susan (2006). My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamonix: Performing Transgender Rage. In: Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, eds., The Transgender Studies Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 221–236.
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Thiele, Kathrin (2021). Figuration and/as Critique in Relational Matters. In: A. Haas, M. Haas, H. Magauer, and D. Pohl, eds., How to Relate: Wissen der Künste und relationale Praktiken/Knowledge, Art, Practices. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, pp. 229–43.
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Vargas, Hema’ny Molina, Marambio, Camila and Lykke, Nina (2020). Decolonising Mourning: World-Making with the Selk’nam People of Karokynka/Tierra del Fuego. Australian Feminist Studies, 35 (104): 186–201.
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Vargas, Hema´ny Molina, Molina, Fernanda Olivares, Marambio, Camila, Lykke, Nina, and Mohamed, Kharnita (2024). Writing Love Letters Across Borders. A Conversation on Indigenous-Centred Methologies. In: N. Lykke, R. Koobak, P. Bakos, S. Arora and K. Mohamed, eds., Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms. And Words Collide from a Place. London: Routledge, pp. 155–171.
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Volcano, del Lagrace and Dahl, Ulrika (2009). femmes of power. Exploding Queer Femininities. London: Serpent’s Tail.
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Search for other papers by Nina Lykke in
Current site
Google Scholar
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Abstract
Approaching femme as a figuration, a political fiction that merges critique of the here-and-now with an ethics of affirmation, driven by desires for an elsewhere/otherwise, the article engages in an experimental – autophenomenographic, poetic, and philosophical – figuring process. The aim is to foreground critical-affirmative potentials of femme and femme-inism in queer and posthumanist perspectives. Starting from a poem that spells out the author’s process of becoming-femme, the article establishes a conversation between the poem’s personal framing and theoretical interventions, selected from archives of critical posthumanist, queer, philosophy in the feminine, transgender and femme theory. The figuring process is based on a vignette methodology. Each of the poem’s stanzas give rise to a vignette, linking the poetic images with resonating theory fragments stitched together to an assemblage. Rather than as an attempt to synthesize a seamlessly interwoven theorization of femme, the figuring process is a meditation on the assembling of unruly fragments.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 206 | 206 | 61 |
| Full Text Views | 10 | 10 | 6 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 34 | 34 | 12 |