When approaching this book, my first reaction was one of resistance and repulsion. Feminism has long been something of a dirty word in my life. From my background in a heavily patriarchal community that viewed feminists as heretical to my experience as a Black woman that showed feminists to be racially exclusionary; I vowed to never refer to myself as such. I viewed feminism through feminists, rather than seeing feminists through feminism. Sara Ahmed’s book allowed me to see feminism as not just a group of people, but as a framework through which I could both interpret and investigate the world I encounter.
Individuals are often rigid and flawed, frameworks can be flexible. Living a feminist life drew me in by examining the author own experiences of fragility and strength, of breaking and snapping, of visibility and willfulness. Through reading this book, class discussion, and a conversation with Charu, I have been introduced to the concept of theory being part of and formed from everyday life. Theory, and feminism, don’t have to be grand gestures, robust academic portfolios, or lofty ventures, they can be found in the small moments and choices we face in our day-to-day lives. I saw for the first time, myself reflected in the considerations of what it meant to live a feminist life as the author defined it for herself. As she recounted her pivotal moments and personal stories as a Brown woman in predominantly white spaces, I vividly recalled my experiences navigating predominantly white and passively violent spaces. As the author defined and defended her personal and public life, I recounted my memories of choosing and protecting my boundaries. And as Ahmed defined feminism finally, I saw myself. By my own admission, I stumbled through much of the reading trying to connect larger topics and concepts to each other. My moments of clarity came as I approached the reading with an empty and open mind. The concepts of fragility and breaking, as well as feminist killjoy, were moments I struggled. I asked myself to lean into the moments of discomfort and I came away with discovery. In the Fragile Connections chapter, Ahmed sums up perfectly what I was encountering. “Confidence too can shatter,” she writes. I went into this book confident that I was correct. My convictions were firm, I was not and did not want to be, a feminist. As I moved through the readings, I felt my confidence shattering, my convictions wavering. Where did I get the idea that I could judge a movement, a concept, or a framework based on the actions of an individual? Why was it so easy to dissuade me from identifying as something I personally embodied? In what ways had I participated in distancing others from living a feminist life, simply because I hadn’t the tools to recognize I was living one? Furthermore, I believe that Fragile Connections was foundational to my understanding of the text, because as Ahmed delves into the concepts of the fragility, agreement, and barriers, I felt she was calling me as the reader to pay attention to the moments where I became awkwardly and publicly visible. As a woman of color, and specifically a Black woman, I often find myself in spaces where my presence is monitored with a watchful eye. Constantly and consistently I find that my actions are magnified and inspected by others, and I felt it necessary to shrink back. I found that my silence could be taken as affirmation, or my words could be misinterpreted as negation. I felt fragile, both in that I myself was likely to crack under pressure, and in that the spaces that I entered were prone to fracturing if I dared to speak or dig too deep. To counter that, I stepped back and out of view. But I believe Ahmed calls us in the latter part of the book to invite or embrace breaking. Breaking, and the feminist snap alongside it, are sites of deviation, moments of fragility, and opportunities for reflection. It is an eerie feeling, confronting deeply held beliefs. More than presenting as the feminist killjoy in my personal life, I found myself being the killjoy to myself. I dug deeper to investigate my assumptions, and my daily encounters. In being a killjoy, I found joy. I found, and continue to find, a peace in both confronting and accepting myself as a feminist. I find joy in the moments of investigation, because they are a time to engage in conversation. As a community-oriented person, I find conversation to be extremely important in my development as not only an academic, but as a participant.
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May 2023
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