Abstract
Moving beyond entrenched biology-culture, structure-agency impasses this chapter opens up our exploration of the entanglement of biopsychosocial forces that shape the gendered phenomenon of depression and recovery as it is researched, managed and experienced. Drawing upon creative analytic writing practices we offer ways of reading-thinking that seek to question normative responses to affective states, emotional life and biomedical claims to truth. There is much to learn from women’s subjugated knowledges of recovery that can trouble the micropolitical assemblages perpetuating distress, as well as produce other ways to feel-move-think our way through more vital bodymind relations. In the traditions of critical, post/decolonial and feminist pedagogies, learning to recover also involves the practices of unlearning master narratives and normative framings of issues, identities and solutions.
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Notes
- 1.
We use the term women to refer to a gender category that is a matter of self-identification and subject positioning (cis and transgender). We also note the limitations of either/or categories of gender for non-binary identifications.
- 2.
This study was funded by the Australian Research Council.
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Fullagar, S., O’Brien, W., Pavlidis, A. (2019). Introduction: Towards a Vital Feminist Politics. In: Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11626-2_1
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