Family lives and relational living: taking account of otherness

Recording of presentation given at Vital Signs 2 Conference, 7-9 September 2010, University of Manchester
In this paper I want to move towards a different framework for thinking about intimacy, relationships and the connections between things – oriented around a feminist appreciation of otherness and affect. Keeping a keen eye on the materiality of difference, I build on ideas of relationality and connectedness to develop an ‘ethic of otherness’, examining how everyday inter-actions create ‘otherness-in-relation’. To illustrate my argument I focus on three examples: the role and value of human-animal relations in family living; intimacy in parent–child relationships; human connections to other things – plants, animals and the world around us. Through these examples I examine experience that spans across generational, species and naturalcultural boundaries, extending ideas on human-object relations. Steering clear of epiphanies and grand realizations that typically shape social theorising on the impact and import of different forms of relationship, I reorient the research gaze onto mundane practices of relational living. Developing an interdisciplinary approach that draws on anecdotal theorizing, I use ‘scraps’ of lived experience to help me articulate, understand and describe intimate relationships. I focus on miniscule moments that have the capacity to disrupt our ways of thinking, providing new and dynamic conceptual points of departure. In looking between the theoretical cracks for illuminating fragments I want to advance a methodological approach that retains the vitality of lived lives. In so doing I aim to produce a quieter, slow and uncertain approach that tries to literarily reflect the multiplicities, fractures and connections that comprise relational living.