Politics of containment: disruptions and interventions

Abstract

In this essay I consider three interrelated aspects of comfort feminism, to consider and unpack its potential use beyond the critique of comfort feminism itself. First, I approach comfort feminism as always intimately implicated in additional affective labor for non-white bodies. I then identify these non-white bodies as geo-bodies: geographically produced subjects/objects. It is a body that is always produced as a disruption to, or an impingement on, the geography and politics of an implicit normative whiteness that is both overt and covert, even in more progressive spaces, including feminist spaces. Ultimately, I consider what pleasure there might be in disrupting the normative despite the (triple) labor geo-bodies do, especially in contemporary politics. To do this, I turn to two separate, but interrelated incidents—one public, the other personal—to extrapolate my approach. In engaging with these examples, I consider the notion of discontainment—where the unhappiness (discontentment) from the disciplining (containment) results in the refusal of both—as a form of radical possibility for the geo-body, especially when occupying spaces—political, geographic, raced, and gendered—not intended for them. By focusing on the interrelated aspects of comfort feminism, my hope is that these negotiations between comfort/discomfort and containment/discontainment may potentially open interesting ways to rethink the relationship between space, race, affect, and politics.