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Communitas/Inmmunitas

Relational ontologies in Atlantic anglophone cultures of the 21st century.

This research project intends to advance in the knowledge production regarding the construction of sustainable communities through the analysis of contemporary anglophone cultural interventions produced at both sides of the Atlantic as an index for social transformation.

In the midst of a life-denying cultural atmosphere that has extensively been described as dystopic, even apocalyptical, due to diverse pandemics, the sense of doom about climate change and its catastrophic consequences, as well as to the necropolitical practices of sexism, racism and ongoing colonialism, this research project is motivated by the need we identify in the current moment to pay analytical attention to the alternatives to this destruction envisioned by artistic, creative minds, in order to learn truly sustainable ways of living and relating that emerge from the creative imagining of alternative forms of communal life and reciprocal care. These are articulated and expressed as instances of solidarity, reciprocity, and decolonial love, artistically represented in a number of selected cultural texts, both audiovisual and literary, recently produced in anglophone regions on both sides of the Atlantic. We will study, particularly, texts from Ireland, the UK, the USA, Canada and the anglophone Caribbean (as part of the Black Atlantic).

While taking into account the processes of inclusion and exclusion, too often crudely based on the dialogic dynamics of privilege and marginalization, and how they are exposed in contemporary cultural productions in English, we turn the lens onto the practices and strategies that sustain life. Our research explores a new critical perspective that emerges at the intersection of apparently divergent modes of theorizing community and individuality that in fact share a strong emphasis on relationality, reciprocity, and response-ability, including Roberto Esposito's concept of communitas; new materialist feminist theories on relational ontologies and response-ability, drawing specially on Karen Barad and Donna Haraway; Black feminist theories on love, relationality and survival; and Indigenous epistemologies of resurgence and survivance developed in North America.

Our study focuses on cultural representations of these ethical concepts in the fields of literature, film and television series originally produced in English in the 21st century, on both sides of the Atlantic. Our research focuses on sexuality, gender, race, class, ethnicity, age, and (dis)ability as primary categories intervening in the assemblage of communities around reciprocity, response-ability, care, alliances and relationalities. We will examine specifically their articulation in the cultural practices that compose our corpus of study, developing reflection on the ethics of our own critical positions and interactions. The project will provide as well theoretical reflection on concepts such as community, necropolitics, decolonization, vulnerability, breathing, aliveness, futurisms, and girlhood, using the methodological tools of interdisciplinary studies that include Feminist Studies, Trans and Queer studies, Girlhood Studies, Masculinity Studies, Decolonial Theories, Critical Race Theory, Indigenous Studies, and Postcolonial Studies.
General objectives
  • To analyze the creative rendering of community building, reciprocal care, response-ability, aliveness and alternative world-makings in a selected corpus of literary and audiovisual texts originally produced in English in the 21st century on both sides of the Atlantic.
  • To inspire reflection and self-analysis within the scholarly circles in which we participate in order to advance towards a research praxis that truly values interdisciplinarity, cooperation, respect, mutual care and co-learning, not only as part of the theoretical bases employed, but also in the methodological and critical practices in the development of research.
Specific Objectives
  • To advance in the theorization on community-making through a comparative study of three main theoretical corpora and of the potential productive synergies among them: Euro-centred approaches like Roberto Esposito’s theories on communitas, immunitas, and bio, critical posthumanist and materialist feminist theories on relationality and response-ability; Black feminist theories on survival, aliveness and breathing; and North American Indigenous knowledge-systems based on relation.
  • To apply an intersectional analysis using those converging theories to a selected corpus of literary and audiovisual texts produced in English in the 21st century on both sides of the Atlantic, in order to examine the imaginative articulations of more just and ethical forms of worldmaking based on alliance, care, reciprocity and response-ability.
  • To produce high-quality research outputs in the form of joint and individual international publications, preferably in open access.
  • To contribute to the building of an empathic academic community through the organization of specific formative events (workshops and seminars) for the discussion of ethical practices of research, as well as advancing and consolidating our ongoing collaboration with international and national researchers working on community, difference and social equity in the interdisciplinary fields of Feminist Studies, Queer Studies, Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Decolonial Studies and Cultural Studies.
  • To contribute more generally to the social efforts towards gender, sexual and racial equity through the production of publications addressed to the general public, and the collaboration with governmental and non-governmental institutions in the organization of specific knowledge-transfer actions in the localities where the researchers are based (Vigo, Palma and Barcelona).
Financing
Grant PID2022-136904NB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and, as appropriate, by “FEDER A way to make Europe”.

Grant from the Xunta de Galicia, Consolidation Call 2024, to the Competitive Reference Group BiFeGa: Research Group in Literary and Cultural Studies, Translation and Interpreting. Reference: ED431C-2024/20.

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