<\/a><\/p>\n

Last night, at Duke\u2019s Feminist Theory Workshop<\/a>, Elizabeth Povinelli presented some of her recent work around geontologies<\/a>. Both in the talk and in the q&a afterwards, there were often turns to her concept of \u201cliving otherwise\u201d\u2014that is, living in non-normative ways.  The phrase calls up for me early twentieth century writer Vita Sackville-West<\/a>\u2019s long poem The Land <\/i>(1927) in which she describes the usefulness or even necessity for \u201creaching out towards an otherwhere.\u201d Here\u2019s the line with some context:<\/p>\n

            And women still have memories of woods,<\/p>\n

Older than any personal memories;<\/p>\n

Writhen, primeval roots, though heads be fair,<\/p>\n

Like trees that fan the air with delicacies,<\/p>\n

With leaves and birds among the upper air,<\/p>\n

High, lifted canopies,<\/p>\n

Green and black fingers of the trees, dividing<\/p>\n

And reaching out towards an otherwhere,<\/p>\n

Threaded with birds and birds\u2019 sweet sudden gliding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is one of the most hauntingly beautiful passages of the poem. For \u201cwomen,\u201d Sackville-West seems to say, the \u201chere\u201d is not safe, not available, not fully inhabitable. Instead, the trees\u2014which Sackville-West later associates with women through the figure of the dryad\u2014search for an alternative place to inhabit. Not necessarily a safer place, but an \u201cotherwhere\u201d nonetheless.<\/p>\n

In Povinelli\u2019s figuration of \u201cliving otherwise,\u201d the attention is placed on practice, that is, the act of living or even the manner of living. In Sackville-West\u2019s figuration, the attention is directed toward place. This idea of an \u201cotherwhere\u201d is incredibly provocative. What does it mean to reach toward a space which is not here? A place whose very existence as \u201cother\u201d depends on the existence and inhabitation of a \u201chere\u201d which might be conceptualized as a \u201cnormative\u201d space? In many ways, this has been the work of many marginalized peoples, communities, and disciplines\u2014to claim that which is \u201cother-ed\u201d (in ability studies and queer theory, for example) and in some cases to bring the \u201cother\u201d (-place, -people, -practice, etc.) into mainstream discourses and practices, with sometimes dubious results (e.g. gay marriage in the U.S.).<\/p>\n

What might be the meaningful differences between and emphasis on place versus an emphasis on practice? Perhaps the most obvious response to such a question is that they need not be mutually exclusive. It has been theorized that places are created by practice. And practices occur in both time and space. But I\u2019m interested to hear what you think. Have we left theorizations of \u201cspace and place\u201d behind us in the move to theories of practice? With what gains and what consequences?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, at Duke\u2019s Feminist Theory Workshop, Elizabeth Povinelli presented some of her recent work around geontologies. Both in the talk and in the q&a afterwards, there were often turns to her concept of \u201cliving otherwise\u201d\u2014that is, living in non-normative ways.  The phrase calls up for me early twentieth century writer Vita Sackville-West\u2019s long poem The Land (1927) in which she describes the usefulness or even necessity for \u201creaching out towards an otherwhere.\u201d Here\u2019s the line with… Towards an Otherwhere<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,26,28,31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aliciapeaker.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aliciapeaker.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aliciapeaker.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aliciapeaker.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aliciapeaker.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aliciapeaker.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aliciapeaker.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aliciapeaker.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aliciapeaker.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aliciapeaker.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}