Kitchen Table Research Articles

A Horse Is a Horse

A Horse Is a Horse

From the President and IFST News

From the President and <scp>IFST</scp> News

Moving beyond ‘shopping list’ positionality: Using kitchen table reflexivity and in/visible tools to develop reflexive qualitative research

Within qualitative research, much can be learned from the influence of researcher positionality on the research process. Reflecting upon ethnographic fieldwork undertaken for a doctoral study, this paper explores how researcher positionality not only shapes research motivations but also situates the researcher and the ‘researched’, impacting how data is created and interpreted. There is a long history of engaging with positionality in qualitative research, however, oftentimes this engagement is purely descriptive, providing a ‘shopping list’ of characteristics and stating if these are shared or not with participants. It is important for engagement with reflexivity to go beyond providing a ‘shopping list’ of positionality statements to develop deeper discussions about the fluidity of positionality across the research process. Using the previously established concept of ‘kitchen table reflexivity’, I reflect on how talk allows researchers to outline shifts and adaptability in positionality as research progresses. I expand this concept to argue that kitchen table reflexivity can occur in conversations during fieldwork with participants, utilising a range of in/visible tools at the researcher’s disposal. For example, the spaces between fieldwork encounters, the ‘waiting field’, is often where observations and informal discussions with participants take place. Using fieldnotes and interview data, this paper outlines how positionality fluctuates and interweaves with the theoretical, methodological, and analytical approach taken. The paper concludes by restating the importance of meaningful engagement with positionality throughout qualitative research, in order to avoid static and hollow positionality statements.

Review: How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others, by T. M. Luhrmann

Review: <i>How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others</i>, by T. M. Luhrmann

“I am not considered much of a polygamist”: Sarah Peterson Lund Writes to Her Missionary Husband

“I am not considered much of a polygamist”: Sarah Peterson Lund Writes to Her Missionary Husband

Where left to seminar in 2022?

The university has now, totally, found its way into our homes. First through demands of the kitchen table to provide the setting for teaching preparation. Then inadvertently: the endless work done with others in mutable workspaces, such as the home, characterizing that same teaching. And now recently, the coronavirus pandemic has found a new, hybrid, teaching space – (working from) home. So, where else is there ‘to seminar’? These questions are not new: Roland Barthes made an everlasting call to ‘outline a space and call it: seminar’. Henk Slager, whose plea in 2017 to ‘[re]activate [the] “unpredictable rhythm” of the seminar’ echoed Barthes, following artists, activists, teachers and organizers calling for new alternatives to ever-institutionalized formats and modes of education. Much of this – sentimentalizing, reproducing, extracting educational forms – is held within the discursive framework of art’s ‘Educational Turn’. In the light of impact that the ‘move online’ has had on art education I am reframing this question of the seminar’s ‘where’ else and ‘what’ else, again in 2022. Once obvious spaces of art education, clearly defined, are left empty, expensive, expansive and broken. Where ghosts and infrastructures contend with one another, the mechanisms of universities are, in theory, open bare; their complex continues to be impenetrable. This text constellates a set of infrastructural considerations to take stock of what it means to ask this question of ‘where’ else and ‘what’ else in 2022.

Exhibition Review: Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970

Exhibition Review: <i>Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970</i>

In the Quiet

In the Quiet Jona Fine (bio) June 6th 2020 Protect ripening strawberries from birds. –Farmer's Almanac 2020 S sits in their usual morning spot sunning themselves by the glass balcony doors in the kitchen. They were holding another book, its spine a soft denim blue. J could just make out the top of S's chest peeking out from behind the pages. The smooth skin, the empty landscape with the exception of two fading scars. When it came down to it, S had wanted everything gone, even their nipples. J knows the flatness has a messy history, was a long time coming, but ever since S's top surgery, S never wants to wear shirts anymore. S spends the weekend lounging around bare-chested. Parading themselves around the small one-bedroom apartment. Doing yoga on the patio that overlooks the street where people walk by with their big mountain dogs. J wants to be happy for them. J still rubs vitamin E oil on S's scars. When they were both stretched out in bed on a Sunday morning, J would caress each crescent, running their fingers along the raised and tender skin. But maybe they just wanted to know what it would feel like. In the quiet, like in the shower, or when they struggled to pull their own binder off, J almost felt safe enough to be jealous. Those moments when they wanted to dig their own breasts out. J puts down the two bowls of oatmeal on the table and S gets up to join them for breakfast. One with raisins and brown sugar because that is how S likes it, the other with sunflower seeds and maple syrup. "Do you always have to sit there bare-chested?" J wants to say, but they know it has taken S a long time to get to this place. They know S's parents aren't supportive. They didn't even come to Foothills Hospital which was just two miles up 55th Street from where they live in a two-story house with a finished basement below where S's childhood bedroom is, the walls still painted prison pink. A border of lavender flowers runs along the edges of the room. Then they didn't come by after to check in on their only child, let alone drop off a card or a casserole. J had been the one to empty S's drains and tuck them in at night surrounded by a fortress of pillows. So instead of asking J just stirs their oatmeal lazily with a spoon. Taking their first bite, they notice the way the porridge has already started to congeal. "What are you reading?" J asks. "Another book of poetry?" [End Page 28] S laughs. "What's wrong with poetry?" They put the book down and pick up their spoon. They have been reading Night Sky with Exit Wounds for weeks. The slender spine crinkled and cracked. One slow page at a time. S says they are savoring the rawness of it all. They never want a book to end. "It's just don't you want to read a novel, like find something you can really invest in, get lost in?" J says. "Poetry never has a sense of place." "But I am getting lost," S says. "I don't know—lost in the details." S traces their scars back and forth with all the fingers in their right hand, even their pinky and then their thumb, while using the other to scoop bites of oatmeal from their bowl to their mouth. It reminds J of someone strumming guitar strings. S talks with their mouth full. "I am invested," they say. "It's like I can taste the words? Is that weird?" S laughs again between chews of oatmeal. They both finish their bowls in silence. After breakfast, S stretches out across the four kitchen table chairs and J moves to the couch so they can wrap themselves in blankets. All the blankets in the world wouldn't feel heavy enough today. ________ Hours later, J wakes up on the couch. The afternoon sun streams through the window and they are sweating...

Kindness, and: Figura Serpentinata, and: On what has become of his body

Kindness, and: Figura Serpentinata, and: On what has become of his body Blas Falconer (bio) Kindness He's kind because he wants people tolike him, Mary's mother said. The firstwoman in Italy to earn a PhDin chemistry, and whose family survivedthe war by hiding hens on the patioof their apartment, she knew I'd justcome out of the closet at 24,and loathing myself, saw any kindnessan act of great charity for which Ishould be eternally grateful, so maybe shewas right, but her insight becameanother reason to hate myself.Mary and I taught in Tatabanya,Hungary, that year, where we earned200 dollars a month, but she'd losther job and come to live with me in a smallstudio on the edge of town. That year,I met Mike and traveled as far as Miskolc,the other end of the country, to lethim touch me, which was the first time I'd beentouched by a man without feeling fear. That year,Mary lost so much weight that her thick hairstarted falling out. She'd run her fingersacross her scalp, and let the clumps fallto the floor. See? When we left, her hairgrew back. She went to law school but said thatshe wanted to get married, have a family morethan anything else. In our mid 30s, I went [End Page 97] to her house where she lived with her husband,a military pilot, and two kids.She was a judge, and our friend Ivy, whowe'd known as long as we'd knowneach other, had come, too. I believe that,constitutionally, you have the rightto marry a man, Mary told me, butI vote for whomever lets me keepas much of my money as possible.She went on to say, slicing a piece of cheesefor her cracker, how difficult it'd beto get along without her au pair, whosetwo-year visa was ending, and soon would haveto go back to France if she didn't findan American husband—and would Iconsider it? Ivy looked embarrassedas I stumbled in confusion and whatI'd later recognize as anger toremind Mary that I was living withJoseph, a man I loved. We didn't talkagain, Mary and I, until 2011,when she told me that Ivy had died,and was surprised to hear that I suspected itwas why she was calling after so much time.I explained how, a few months before,Ivy left a message to congratulate usabout the adoption—I'm so happy, soso happy for you both—and that she hadcancer and hoped to beat it, but whenshe didn't answer my calls, I fearedthe worst. As far as Mary knew, Ivy hadn't toldanyone else. She must have really liked you,Mary said to herself it seemed, as muchas to me, and I felt like I should saysomething kind in return, and took a deepbreath, considering how to begin. [End Page 98] Figura Serpentinata She began screaming atthe man standing behind us in line. The cashier lookedout from behind a glass partition. The man steppedback laughing, shaking his head. Stop, I saidto my mother. Please. I was still a child. She was stillscreaming, He can't touch me like that. The men lookedto each other and looked away. Then she stopped,electrified with rage, took my hand, and we stoodin silence, waiting to pay. * My father and I satat the kitchen table when we heard, faintly, someonescreaming. Your sister, he said [End Page 99] alarmed, already leaping upthe stairs, and for a moment, I too imagined someonestanding over her in the dark. Dad, I called, and he stoppedon the landing outside her door. It's just a songon the radio—so low that we couldn't discern the words.A song, I repeated. That's all. We walked back down the stepsbreathless, shaking our heads. * In Giambologna's Abduction,the figures...

Unlisted

Unlisted

Review: Peach State, by Adrienne Su

Review: <i>Peach State</i>, by Adrienne Su

Class Rooms

Class Rooms

The Beginning of Memory

The Beginning of Memory

Must Have Been A Lie

Must Have Been A Lie

Sifting

Sifting

Imagined Histories

Imagined Histories

CYNTHIA C. PRESCOTT AND MAUREEN S. THOMPSON, EDS., Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook

CYNTHIA C. PRESCOTT AND MAUREEN S. THOMPSON, EDS., Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook

Preface

Preface Judith Gardiner and Matt Richardson this year, 2022, marks the fiftieth anniversary of Feminist Studies. In the spirit of retrospection and celebration, our first issue of the year commemorates the fortieth birthdays of two anthologies that heralded major innovations in feminist theory: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Persephone Press, 1981; Kitchen Table Press, 1983) and All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (The Feminist Press, 1982). The writing in this issue reflects the deeply personal impact that these books have had on scholars' intellectual, political, and emotional development since the time of their publication. Several of these essays articulate and historicize concepts from these anthologies that have since become influential in gender studies, later termed "intersectionality," "women of color, and "queer theory." Other essays contribute new approaches to feminist theory developed in the last forty years. In addition to scholarly articles, this special issue includes two art features as well as a cluster of creative prose and poetry reflecting on This Bridge Called My Back and But Some of Us Are Brave curated by our creative writing editor, Alexis Pauline Gumbs. As a whole, this issue of Feminist Studies explores and expands the categories developed in those original two anthologies. The categories "women of color" and "queer" may seem disparate. However, it is precisely women of color feminisms that centered the voices of lesbian activists, writers, and scholars who insisted on acknowledging [End Page 7] the various parts of their identities, thereby paving the way for anti-essentialist understandings of gender, race, and sexuality. The category "women of color" realigned thinking about gender, ethnic heritage, and "race." It was preceded by the category of "people of color," which aimed to unite all persons who had been targeted by white supremacy through a common and liberatory political alignment. The category of "queer theory" reoriented thinking about both sexuality and gender. These categories, which are anti-essentialist, question supposed boundaries between nature and nurture, between the biological and the cultural. These categories were understood in differing, sometimes overlapping dimensions. Both "women of color" and "queer" assumed and realigned older majoritarian categories that once seemed self-evident although they were not. That is, new categories regarding race and ethnicity assumed a stable background of "white" dominance, at least in the United States, although the boundaries of whiteness, as well as of other racialized categories, continue to be contested. New categories defining gender identity and sexual orientation, which were also apparently self-evident though still under scrutiny, were shown to be unstable and continually contested so that categories like "woman" and "women" no longer seemed self-evident. The essays in this issue illuminate how the concepts "women of color" and "queer" opened up new approaches to theory at the same time that they introduced new exclusions and new opportunities for action and coalition. Samantha Pinto and Jennifer C. Nash envision the potential of This Bridge Called My Back and But Some of Us Are Brave as a corrective to the limited scripts that have emerged in feminist theorizing. In their article, "Then and Now: Women of Color Originalism and the Anthological Impulse in Women's and Gender Studies," they show how these two pioneering anthologies continue to circulate alongside "women of color," a term that these texts helped produce as "legible and coherent," yet one that still remains undertheorized. Treating the anthologies as performances of "bridging," Pinto and Nash describe their visions of struggle for an autonomous institutional space for Black women's studies. They claim that "intersectionality has become the institutional cure for women's studies and the intellectual property of Black feminism." They argue that these anthologies self-consciously call attention "to how the field has created, crafted, and performed difference in the women's studies classroom" in order to situate the category "women of color" within this interdiscipline. [End Page 8] In a complementary essay that describes "Revisiting This Bridge Called My Back" decades after its original appearance, Paulina Jones-Torregrosa describes the impact the book had upon her as an undergraduate, leading her to insist that we must not settle...

A Sociology of Wine – Reflections from my Kitchen Table

In this paper Dr. Peter J. Howland—former bureaucrat, concrete block maker, journo (investigative and sports), publican, apple picker, bank clerk (for one week), gas station attendant (for two weeks), horse-racing results editor and now, wine scholar and practicing neo-Marxist Sociologist—reflexively interviews himself on the current situations in the ‘Sociology of Wine’ while sitting at his kitchen table nursing a newly inserted ‘bionic’ elbow and arm, drinking a local Pinot Noir, and ‘floating’ along on a concoction of painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Given his somewhat physically and socially unsettled circumstances, Howland is unsurprisingly drawn to discussing one of his grumpy old man ‘pet peeves’—that is how in the sociological study of wine the foundational and enduring materialities of commercial winemaking—and especially its botanical and economic affordances—are often under-analysed at best or at worst, are demonised as reductive and outmoded. Consequently, Howland argues with himself that these factors are also often overwhelmed by the bling of ‘flashy cultural turns’ in analysis and theorizing. He calls on sociologists far abler than himself to ensure the foundational and the obvious are an integral part of all wine scholarship—much like the laws of motion are always accounted for in physics research. Howland points to a number of studies that successfully (or at least, that commendably attempt to) combine both the foundational and the cultural turning—ideally highlighting their mutual constitutions and contradictions.

Counter-terrorism training “at your kitchen table”: the promotion of “CT citizens” and the securitisation of everyday life in the UK

ABSTRACT The growing call for public participation in counter-terrorism in Britain is reflected by the number of recent campaigns directed towards different sectors of the population and, increasingly, towards “ordinary” citizens. However, there has been a lack of research examining how counter-radicalisation campaigns seek to target the whole population and have an impact on everyday subjectivities and actions. Drawing on studies on governmentality, this article examines the promotion of the “CT citizen” as a distinctive political agent and social identity embedded in the participation of mass surveillance and the normalisation of pre-emptive security logics. Based on a critical discourse analysis of the most recent official counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation websites and e-learning materials (Let’s Talk About It, Educate Against Hate, Action Counters Terrorism, and the Prevent duty), I show how citizens are being inscribed as counter-terrorism officials through discourses of responsibility, care, awareness, empowerment, and action. This article explores the role of British counter-terrorism in the production of new models of citizenship based on a generalised culture of suspicion and in the participation in security duties previously reserved to the authorities. The discussion highlights ultimately that the securitisation of everyday life and the inscription of individuals in “national security” results in the depoliticisation of both the civil society and political violence.