towards loving rememberings : enlivening processes of depathologising, decolonising and deindividualising women's resistances to violence : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology, Massey University, Manawatū Campus, Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This project moves towards stories of loving rememberings by enlivening processes of decolonising, depathologising and deindividualising women's resistances to violence. Beginning with an early interest in care and in ethical responses to domestic violence and mental health crises, the thesis unfolds by following care's questions through an engagement with feminist texts of narrativity, post-humanism and process ontology alongside indigenous mana wāhine scholarship. As listening differently with texts of women's resistances to violence aids a recognition of the project's embeddedness within the imposition of colonial patriarchy in Aotearoa New Zealand, the thesis works with Rosi Braidotti's (2022a; 2022b) 𝘢𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘹𝘪𝘴 to privilege 𝘵𝘪𝘬𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘢 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘭𝘢𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘢 (Mikaere, 2011). Working from the location of a Pākehā woman committed to becoming tangata tiriti, I bring together the co-emergent methodologies of 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘺 (Braidotti, 2010), 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 (Hillary, 2022; 2023) and 𝘩𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘯𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘺 (Rogerson et al., 2018) to track the production of subjectivity, power and desire through knowledge-making and to open up possibilities for creative resistances by working with affective intensities and textual expressions of difference. As understandings of care transform through relationships with waters, lands and ancestors, the project moves with grief as it becomes possible to recognise the wilful forgettings of empire embedded through subjectivities, relationships, knowledges (and) in a coming to terms with a desire for loving rememberings. Following the resonances through the music of song, the project opens up to move towards stories of love. Through its presentation as performance, the work activates textual experiments through the narrative constitution of knowledge to accentuate the affective potentials of knowledge-making productions. In doing so, it seeks to open up possibilities for moving with the potentials for women's resistances to violence that are enlivened through engagement with lifeforce, spirit and breath.