In this article I explore love's relation to gendered power asymmetries by comparing Anna Jónasdóttir's, Jessica Benjamin's and Teresa Brennan's respective theorizations of this theme. Despite the considerable differences between these feminist frameworks, they can all be read in terms of what I call the figure of the Dominant and its Constitutive Other. This refers to the contradictory relation whereby the powerful and ‘independent’ existence of the one is premised on that which is other to it, as well as on (...) the denial and obscuring of this constitutive dependence. Via a dialogue with critical realist and metaReal themes I move from a concern with how the feminine ‘Other’ tacitly constitutes the masculine Dominant through practices of love, to thematizing the basic stratum of being as the constitutive Other of the oppressive economy of love. The structure of the self emerges as a central organizing principle in the oppressive relations considered, and the article explores what might be a non-violent mode.. (shrink)

In this piece, we articulate the "collaborative autoethnographic practice" we utilized to illustrate the complexities of mothering that involved: (a) individually writing autoethnographic narratives on mothering, (b) sharing these autoethnographic narratives in a public forum, (c) publicly discussing the heuristic commonalities across these autoethnographic narratives, (d) tying those commonalities back to the literature, and (e) revisiting the autoethnographic narratives for aspects of social critique where our autoethnographic narratives (intentionally or unintentionally) hegemonicaly reproduced cultural scripts. We argue that presenting knowledge of (...) mothering in this way, through collaborative autoethnographic practice, creates a myriad of opportunities for growth and self-reflexivity, and our stories illuminate a part of our existence that often remains unexamined in other methodologies. (shrink)