PhD Teaching: Words Otherwise: Writing Architecture with Queer Feminists of Color

Abstract

How can our writing be different if we write with the toolkits of queer feminism? How can this practice of writing help us to imagine an otherwise for the spaces we inhabit, draw, invade, or leave behind? This course will critically approach these questions, centering the practice of collective and creative writing, focusing on the radical writings of queer feminists of color.

Objective

If the built environment can be the passive embodiment of the various structures of power, memory, and dictation, then to deconstruct these structures—from their core—we need to deconstruct the words and grammar we adopt in thinking about architecture; we need to queer them. Taking this concern as the core objective, this course is designed to challenge how we read, discuss, circulate, and cite critical texts in architecture schools. As to queer writing, we need to rethink reading. Drawing on the act of writing collectively—with objects, memories, feelings, texts, and spaces—this course aims to bring writing architecture into a shared practice of solidarity, critical imagination, and radical hope. The learning outcome of this course will enable students to practice collective writing and editing, as well as translating the critical thoughts of feminisms of color in their thinking and writing about the built environment.

Content

Words Otherwise: Writing Architecture with Queer Feminists of Color "To begin with the otherwise as word, as a concept, is to presume that whatever we have is not all that is possible." Ashon Crawley, a queer writer of black studies, coins the notion of "otherwise" as a "disbelief in what is current and a movement towards." To him, otherwise comes with disbelief in what is current, yet it trespasses the possibility, the given, the structured, the sacred. Otherwise, it is a demand as well as a tool for critical thinking to "imagine other modes of social organization, other ways for us to be with each other." Crawley echoes what has been the beating heart of writings by feminists of color: critical imagination, the plea for what seems impossible, forbidden, dead-end, violent. In "Dreams of Trespass" (1994), Fatima Mernissi, the Moroccan feminist writer, tells the tale of Harem women whose critical imaginations were flying far away from the walls of orientalism or patriarchy. Likewise, Seddighe Dowlatabadi, an Iranian feminist and journalist, in her radical journal, Women's Tongue (1919-1921), stresses the necessity of demanding the impossible, as she writes, "Our demand is considered not to be demandable because they have demanded us so." In this light, what can be the queer writing of architecture? How can we use "otherwise" to draw the lines of impossibility when thinking about the built environment? Following the tradition of critical imagination and otherwise, in the long history of feminism of color, the content of this course is shaped to challenge top-down teaching methods. Therefore, in its content and delivery, this course aims to work toward building a horizontal and collective syllabus, materials, writing, and discussion. The raw materials of this course—such as photographs, songs, memories, dreams, stories, things, texts, etc.—as well as the format of writing and reading will be selected by students. The course is divided into four phases: remembering, telling, listening, and sharing. During the phases, we will read two texts—chosen by students from the proposed anthologies or from students’ suggestions—around writing, remembrance, resistance, transgression, survival, and hope. The readings are followed by different writing practices in the class and workshopping with the guests invited. The listening session will take place in a feminist activist sites in Zurich and will include a group interview of students with activists, a collective reading and discussion of the chosen texts, and the preparation for the final submission of writing drafts. In the last phase, we will collectively edit each other’s writings and present them to invited guests in response to the question: What can be the queer writing of architecture?

Resources