Becoming Real through Matter that Matters: A Diffractive Reading of The Velveteen Rabbit
Title and/or Affiliation
Dr. / Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
Presenter Bio
Adrianna Zabrzewska is a Fulbright scholar and a feminist interdisciplinary researcher with a PhD in philosophy from the Polish Academy of Sciences. She has a forthcoming article in IRCL on gender in American and Polish children’s literature publishing. Adrianna has translated over 200 children’s books from English to Polish.
Session
Panel: Reading Classics through Other Eyes
Location
Zoom
Start Date
8-7-2022 2:45 PM
End Date
8-7-2022 4:00 PM
Abstract
By reading The Velveteen Rabbit through the lens of Karen Barad’s physics-inspired philosophy, we can observe that, initially, Williams’s story shows us that to exist and to be loved as a finite, imperfect body is a gradual process that invites interdependence and vulnerability. The second part of the book, however, contradicts this message and pursues a different kind of realness. Whereas Realness with a capital “R” signifies the dynamic, embodied becoming of a unique and unrepeatable existent, “small R” realness denotes the condition of being similar or even identical to another entity or group. While Realness cherishes otherness, realness rejects it. Williams’s story can be thus used to demonstrate Barad’s new materialist philosophy and the order that it challenges. What this philosophy seeks to battle is Western culture’s fear of difference and its disdain for various embodied “others.”
Becoming Real through Matter that Matters: A Diffractive Reading of The Velveteen Rabbit
Zoom
By reading The Velveteen Rabbit through the lens of Karen Barad’s physics-inspired philosophy, we can observe that, initially, Williams’s story shows us that to exist and to be loved as a finite, imperfect body is a gradual process that invites interdependence and vulnerability. The second part of the book, however, contradicts this message and pursues a different kind of realness. Whereas Realness with a capital “R” signifies the dynamic, embodied becoming of a unique and unrepeatable existent, “small R” realness denotes the condition of being similar or even identical to another entity or group. While Realness cherishes otherness, realness rejects it. Williams’s story can be thus used to demonstrate Barad’s new materialist philosophy and the order that it challenges. What this philosophy seeks to battle is Western culture’s fear of difference and its disdain for various embodied “others.”
Comments
Moderated by Lisa Rowe Fraustino