Panel #2 Session 1
Wednesday 29 November - 14:00
Building 25, Room 1
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​Chair: Paul Magee
How can we use a ‘labial narrative framework’ to explore ambivalent intimate experiences of shame and desire in short fiction?
- Eve Nucifora-Ryan
University of Canberra
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This paper uses the term ‘labial framework for female desire’ from psychoanalyst Britt Marie Schiller (2012), who proposed such a framework for expressing female desire as opposed to the phallic default. Much like theorists of ecriture feminine (Cixous, 1975, Irigaray, 1977) before her, Schiller’s proposal for a female – as opposed to the dominant male – form of desire is inflicted with dubious gender essentialism as well as vagueness as to how such a model may be actualised. This paper takes the concept and explores how a ‘labial framework’ may be used to create and inform narrative structures in short fiction to present the intimate dynamics of female shame (Probyn, 2005) and desire (Ahmed, 2004; Ngai, 2005). By creating tangible but experimental narrative structures based on the evocations of the word labial – working with ideas of twoness, slipperiness, and what can be ‘folded’ into the short prose form – I examine the use of a labial narrative framework in my own creative practice. I question the use of the framework to represent the often amorphous, slippery, and complex affects of shame and desire and question whether a labial narrative framework can be employed in fiction in a way that does not preference the idea that there is one biological way to be woman.
Eve Nucifora is a PhD candidate at the University of Canberra. Her creative-led research draws on feminist, psychoanalytical, and affect theories to explore ambivalence as a recurring motif in short prose fiction, expressed through sexuality, place, and sensation. Her stories have been published in Axon and Meniscus journals.
Guiding body awareness through spoken text: Developing a queer somatic life writing method
- Nina Baeyertz
La Trobe University
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This paper explores how spoken body-awareness texts can form part of a life-writing practice in a way that nurtures practitioner care through structured somatic engagement, while critiquing normative conventions of spoken meditation techniques.
Informed by corporeal feminism and queer phenomenology, and engaging with somatic/performance writing methodologies, this research emphasises subjective knowledge of the experiencing body as a resource for life writing, while being alert to the performativity of language.
Smith and Watson (2010, p. 49) state that “the ability to recover memories… depends on the physical body.” This also means that life writing is reliant on physiological, neurological and biochemical processes to produce text. When authors are both the subject and object of their research, this process can be difficult. Structured embodied writing methods may be useful to guide writing but can be problematic due to their adoption of conventional language patterns. Although these meditation-like approaches can cultivate safety when writing traumatic material, it is also important to remain alert to how their structures can produce a compliant, normative, individual body.
In this paper I investigate how queering the form of guided awareness texts, through experiment with imagery, grammar, vocabulary and silence, may make possible a writing method that both cares for practitioners and critiques hegemonic understandings of the way text, memory and affect create/inhabit the body. I ask how this method encourages a subjective bodily experience that facilitates the writing of alternative life narratives grounded in an extended material and socio-political context, and allows space for flights of resistance.
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Nina Baeyertz is a PhD student at La Trobe University, where her research project focuses on queer/ing addiction life writing. She is interested in writing the body in the margins between autobiography and fiction, while exploring how shame works in text to simultaneously conceal and reveal. She was the 2022 recipient of LTU’s Allan Martin Prize for best interdisciplinary Honours thesis in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, for her thesis The Aporia of Writing. Shame.
Appropriation and the Authentic voice
- Karen Martin
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Current debate challenges authors' appropriation of culture, race and gender in fiction. In this context, what is an authentic voice?
In the fictional landscape, authors are encouraged to explore the boundaries of imagination. Yet recent trends in the US sees traditional publishers increasingly rejecting work if authors are not mirrored in the cultural, racial, or gender backgrounds of the characters within their narratives.
The contentious debate surrounding appropriation highlights issues around power, privilege, and the impact of representation on marginalized communities. Authenticity has become a defining criterion. Determining what qualifies as authentic raises questions of who has authority to speak for, or incorporate, a particular culture, race, or gender. Understanding what constitutes an authentic voice is crucial.
Critics argue that authors from dominant groups should approach writing about marginalized experiences with caution, as they may not fully comprehend the nuances and realities faced by these communities. Renowned psychologist Brene Brown stresses “we cannot ever walk in someone else’s shoes.” On the other hand, proponents advocate for writers to explore and depict diverse experiences, promoting literature as a space for imagination and empathy.
Is it possible to write with authenticity under threat of an accusation of appropriation? Is a creative balance possible through acknowledgement of the power, history, and identity that lie within the folds of appropriation? What outcome does this, or should this, have on an authors’ creativity?
Let’s discuss.
I am an award-winning playwright and author living in regional Victoria. I ran away with the Women's Circus, created plays in Irish prisons, and wrote theatre that strived for transformation. I won awards for my work, received travel funding to write in-situ, and learned to listen as the muses whispered in my ear. My debut novel Dancing the Labyrinth was translated into Greek and published by Radamanthys Publications. The Bringer of Happiness was published in 2022. Both novels blend Greek mythology and historical research with imagination in telling (almost true) stories. DELPHI is due for release early 2024.