Beyond the Beyond: Closing and Opening

By Susannah Bartlow, Stephanie Gilmore, and Duchess Harris

Acting on instinct and on experience in our own lives, responding in community, we read and invited contributions that we felt moved us closer to a space beyond critique. We have been reminded that critique is important, but we also have been reminded that many of us are experiencing “critique fatigue.” That fatigue has left many to engage sites of activism with tremendous trepidation, or to abandon activism altogether.

So we are encouraged to see people talk about love, care, community and more in ways that center work that moves “beyond critique.” Working with the forum has been a practice and engagement, continuous and shifting, that has no center and finds its own home each day. With this experiment–shifting our creative and exploratory and heady and physical language into a space beyond critique—we move and stay present. We discover new “we” and we honor that.

What has the forum brought up for you? What do you do beyond critique? What do you do to resist or complicate that move?

We hope that you will join us by submitting work to keep the conversation moving. We hope, also, that you are inspired to hold your own communities with compassion and care.

The Feminist Wire, “Beyond Critique:  Feminist Strategies in the 21^st Century”

Monday, April 7

• Beyond Critique Introduction
• Claire TIghe, “Feminist Critique:  A Legacy of Transformation”
• Layli Maparyan & AnaLouise Keating “The Promise of Post-Oppositional Politics: A Preliminary Conversation”

Tuesday, April 8

• Rose M. Brewer, “From Feminist Critique to Social Transformation:  Social Forum Lessons”
• Lyndsey Godwin, “Meditations on Being Right”
• Shelby Crosby, “Trying to Understand:  A Daughter’s Prayer”

Wednesday, April 9

• Kimbo Grama, “The Gentle Critique in Activist Spaces: A Newby’s First Year Journey on Social Media”
• Jay Keim, “Caring Queer Feminist Communities”

Thursday, April 10

• Emma Redden, “This Is An [Unfinished] Story About Violence”
• Jennifer Patterson, “Queering Sexual Violence”

Friday, April 11

• Meera Seshadri, “Not My Vagina”
• Nyle Fort, “Every 28 Hours: An Ode to Renisha McBride” (a Sermon)
• Swati Bandi, “Room Without a Roof”
• David J. Leonard, {Feminists We Love} Emily Lordi: Moving us beyond critique one artist at a time

Monday, April 14

• Mandy Van Deven & Lisa Borchata-Forchers, “What are the connections between sexual violence and feminism’s toxicity?”
• Susannah Bartlow, Stephanie Gilmore & Duchess Harris, “Beyond the Beyond:  closing and opening”