Thesis to Follow

Finding the heart of kinship By Michelle Elmitt University of Canberra 11 March, 2020 Abstract This is a study on the intelligibility of love in social families. Using field research from contemporary Australia and Bahir Dar, Ethiopia it examines the ways that adults are performing in loving relationships with non-biological children to make their relationships intelligible, particularly when spoken language may not allow articulation of the intersecting lines of desire, conflict and loss. The examination occurs across different social worlds, where the divide between biological and social kinship differs, and anticipates revisions of kinship in all its complexities. It involves analyses of fifteen face-to-face interviews and provides interpretations of the emotional and psycho-social phenomena revealed in the interviews both academically and through a creative writing process. In this research a rich theoretical tapestry is woven to investigate the complex and multifaceted lived experiences of the participants, as well as the possibilities of love and kinship that arise. Key to this is an engagement with Judith Butler’s work, in particular Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (2000).1 Butler’s work helps to uncover tensions and ambiguities that arise when relationships are formed amid a current of opposing discourses, particularly in societies which persist in privileging the nuclear family model, and make the topic hard to talk about. Her concept of performativity also provides a means of understanding why each family is doing things differently. Foucault’s concept of subjugated knowledges2 is another structuring thread throughout this investigation. It informs my aim of bringing to light and interrogating the buried or hidden knowledges of social parents to uncover alternative discourses and possibilities for action. The dissertation includes six chapters. Each chapter contains scholarly and fictional analysis of the fieldwork, which consists of interviews with fifteen 1 Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death, New York: Columbia University Press, (2000). 2 Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures” and “Truth and Power,” in Power/Knowledge – Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon, 2nd ed. New York: Pantheon Books. (1980), 82. v participants: eleven adults parenting children in step, adoptive, foster and same- sex families in Australia, and four adults who have adopted children in Ethiopia. In line with a reflexive methodology based on visual ethnography, the fifteen participants were invited to bring photographs of themselves with their non- biological children to discuss with me in one-hour long unstructured interviews. In Ethiopia I was accompanied by a co-researcher, Mr Temesgen Beyene. In the scholarly analysis of the fieldwork I review discourses to capture the effects of the many power-plays that influence the participants, and I explore playful and creative spaces where the subjects’ inner and outer worlds may meet in ways that foster loving relationality, drawing from Donald Winnicott’s Playing and Reality (1971)3. It is my intention, through such a focus, to cast light on the way that processes of love and aspects of the unconscious interact. The fictional analysis, by way of creative writing methodology, works through some of the more immeasurable emotional phenomena, and highlights moments of conflict, confusion and ambiguity in the interviews and scholarly analysis. It explores the more immeasurable emotional, haptic and affective information that was conveyed outside of spoken language and leaves space for the reader to navigate some of the confusions and tensions that arise in the participants’ descriptions of their relationships for themselves. It also incorporates the researchers’ lived experiences and positions more fully into the research. The findings indicate that, while loving relationships in social families can be confusing and fragile, people are reworking discourses to find ways of making them intelligible. In some cases adults appear to be creating transitional spaces where differences might be negotiated, and intersubjective relationality can develop in complex psycho-social terrain. In other cases, adults appear to be making use of such spaces that already exist. Just as Antigone’s Claim anticipates a social revision of kinship — where the unwritten rules are examined and new possibilities of fulfilling family relationships can emerge — the findings of this study anticipate a social revision of kinship where the hegemony of biological relationships weakens and people come together in new kin-like formations to extend ideas of what family, home and kinship are. 3 Donald Winnicott, Playing and Reality, London: Tavistock Publications, (1971). vi Acknowledgements My heartfelt thanks to Associate Professor Paul Magee for his consistent support and advice. Dr Affrica Taylor and Dr Bethaney Turner. My wonderful children Nick, Ady, Maggie and Emi. vii Table of Contents .............................................................................................................................. iii Abstract .................................................................................................................. v Acknowledgements .............................................................................................. vii Table of Contents ................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................... 1 1.1.1 Setting the Scene ........................................................................................................ 7 1.1.2 Negative Space ......................................................................................................... 22 1.2 My Approach ......................................................................................................... 26 1.2.1 Cross-cultural Research ............................................................................................ 28 1.2.2 Sensory Ethnography and the Reflexive Approach .................................................. 35 1.2.3 Creative Writing Methodology ................................................................................. 37 1.2.4 Ethical Guidelines ..................................................................................................... 42 1.3 Literature Review ................................................................................................... 43 1.3.1 Butler and Butlerian thinkers.................................................................................... 44 1.3.2 Other Queer Theorists .............................................................................................. 47 1.3.3 Scholars of Adoption, Local and International ......................................................... 49 1.3.4 Thinkers of Relationality ........................................................................................... 54 1.3.5 Psychoanalytic Trends .............................................................................................. 57 1.3.6 Some Ways to Think About Love .............................................................................. 62 1.3.7 Where to Look for Love ............................................................................................ 64 1.4 The Thesis to Follow ............................................................................................... 67 Chapter Two: Transracial Adoption ....................................................................... 69 2.1 Fiction .................................................................................................................... 69 2.1.1 Fistulas and flowers .................................................................................................. 69 2.1.2 Milk ........................................................................................................................... 76 2.1.3 Markings ................................................................................................................... 82 2.1.4 Think out loud ........................................................................................................... 90 2.2 Field Work.............................................................................................................. 98 2.2.1 Yvonne ..................................................................................................................... 98 2.2.2 Kathryn .................................................................................................................. 110 2.2.3 Maureen ................................................................................................................. 123 2.2.4 Kasey ...................................................................................................................... 131 2.2.5 Martin .................................................................................................................... 140 2.3 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 150 Chapter Three: Different Situations ..................................................................... 153 3.1 Fiction .................................................................................................................. 153 3.1.1 This is not how I am ...............................................................................................

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