Anna Fishzon and Emma Lieber, "The Queerness of Childhood: Essays from the Other Side of the Looking Glass" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
Jun 3, 2023
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Exploring the concept of queer time in various contexts, the podcast discusses disrupting linear time norms, societal pressures of time constraints, love and waiting in lines, word connotations, and friendship in a cartoon setting, ending with expressions of gratitude and farewells.
Time influences identities and perceptions, impacting personal experiences and professional transitions.
Childhood is a retroactive creation shaped by societal ideals, exploring queerness and personal identity.
Deep dives
Exploring Time, Psychoanalysis, and Endings
The podcast delves into the complex theme of time, analyzing its impact on psychoanalysis and personal experiences. Reflecting on the notions of linear time, retroaction, and disruption, the conversation highlights how time influences our identities and perceptions. Moreover, the discussion contemplates how disruptions in time can lead to existential reflections and transformations, especially in the context of personal and professional transitions, ultimately leading to a farewell and new beginnings.
Childhood, Queerness, and Soviet Nostalgia
The episode discusses childhood, queerness, and Soviet nostalgia, exploring how childhood is a retroactive creation shaped by societal ideals and perceptions. It reflects on the challenges of growing up under socialism, symbolized by artifacts like Gholuboy-shinok representing queerness and personal identity. By examining the intersection of childhood experiences, political histories, and personal narratives, the conversation unveils the complexities of youth in a changing world.
Impacts of Loss and Mourning
The conversation shifts towards themes of loss and mourning, delving into personal and political upheavals experienced by immigrants. It reflects on the melancholic aftermath of societal transformations and geopolitical shifts, resonating with the idea of living with enduring grief. By intertwining personal and collective losses, the episode navigates the intricate process of mourning and remembrance in the face of evolving identities and shifting landscapes.
Musical Reflections and Fond Farewells
As the episode draws to a close, a reflective tone emerges, touching on musical expressions, personal legacies, and the significance of shared experiences. The hosts engage in a poignant farewell, expressing gratitude for the journey and the connections forged. Through personal anecdotes, shared reflections, and a musical interlude, the episode encapsulates a blend of introspection, nostalgia, and hopeful anticipation for future endeavors.
In this interview, Anna Fishzon, co editor with Emma Lieber on The Queerness of Childhood: Essays from the Other Side of the Looking Glass (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), discusses her thinking about temporality, queer theory, psychoanalysis and childhood with Tracy Morgan who concomitantly calls time on her own work with the podcast. Together these two friends and colleagues and former hosts, laugh, maybe choke up a bit, reminisce and riff. Morgan, in a first in her over thirteen years as host and founding editor of the channel, ends the interview and her work with NBiP, with a song.
About the book:
This book represents a meeting of queer theorists and psychoanalysts around the figure of the child. Its intention is not only to interrogate the discursive work performed on, and by, the child in these fields, but also to provide a stage for examining how psychoanalysis and queer theory themselves interact, with the understanding that the meeting of these discourses is most generative around the queer time and sexualities of childhood. From the theoretical perspectives of queer theory, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and gender studies, the chapters explore cultural, aesthetic, and historical forms and phenomena that are aimed at, or are about, children, and that give expression to and make room for the queerness of childhood.