woocommerce-shipping-per-product domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131complianz-gdpr domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131The family unit is where we have our first experience of identification with a group and take our early steps toward socialization. The word \u201cfamily\u201d generally has a positive connotation, evoking kinship and a sense of belonging. The word is so powerful that its biological and genealogical meanings are broadened to encompass forms of affiliation with a community of mind\u200a\u2014\u200athe chosen family\u200a\u2014\u200aparticularly when the immediate family does not offer the expected sense of security and comfort. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nAlthough the traditional family has gradually been transformed, becoming less normative, its symbolic and social significance still weighs on our conception of a harmonious home. Society still applies pressure to become a parent, for example\u200a\u2014\u200aand, especially, to become a mother. As Austin Henderson emphasizes in the feature section in this issue, \u201cUnder capitalism\u2019s demand for renewal and procreation, society has developed a presumed need for heterosexual family structures. Paired with this is the promise of producing a \u2018happy family\u2019 as a selling point for the machine of social reproduction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The intention of the feature section in this issue is not to outright reject the family\u200a\u2014\u200aan institution that many see as sacred\u200a\u2014\u200abut to try to untangle or unfold it, to take up the textile metaphor that several of the authors here employ. We have adopted a flexible interpretation of the concept of family, delving into it from both genealogical and symbolic angles. Our gaze is sweeping, from artistic kinships to knowledge transmitted between generations, queer families, and even less-conventional forms such as multispecies families. On this subject, Chris J. Gismondi reminds us that \u201ckinship with land, with nonhuman nations, and with other humans is a vital part of Indigenous worldviews and life,\u201d and he borrows the expression \u201ckinscape\u201d from the Cree-M\u00e9tis poet Marilyn Dumont. In fact, this word so powerfully evokes a fundamental link between the land and the different life forms that populate it that I, too, have borrowed it for the title of this editorial. And so, this issue\u2019s feature section contains a panoply of possible family models, scrutinized in a multitude of stories and panoramas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This issue is designed a little like the album of a recomposed artistic family. It includes different generations of Indigenous artists sharing a technical or aesthetic heritage or exploring memory by revisiting their family archives. In these cases, vernacular photography provides valuable evidence for reconstructing the stories of diasporic families. The maternal figure is also foregrounded. Depicted with a touch of humour, these portrayals depart from the facile interpretation of the invisible mother submerged by her children to present a more realistic, if sometimes facetious, picture of maternity: states of simultaneous ecstasy and agony. The chosen family is also a central focus, both in our authors\u2019 theoretical research and in the creative strategies deployed in many of the works on view\u200a\u2014\u200aphotographs, paintings, and textile assemblages that claim use of the word \u201cfamily\u201d beyond blood ties. In LGBTQ+ communities, Benoit Jodoin notes, \u201cuse of the word is a political act\u201d; he also reminds us that \u201cthe metaphorical approach of textile art can disrupt the norms of this social organization by undermining its nuclear model with a renewed and creative version\u200a\u2014\u200aa queerified version.\u201d Fabric is indeed a superb metaphor for the multiplicity of intertwinings underlying the idea of family. The fabrication of new links, and the recognition of those that already exist, by the \u201cresumption of threads of kinship passed on through intergenerational vectors of transmission,\u201d as Gwynne Fulton puts it, are other ways to consider encounters among members of a chosen or refound family. Finally, \u201coddkin\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aa notion borrowed from Donna Haraway\u200a\u2014families also figure in this album. More marginal, they involve multispecies cohabitations that are not without raising ethical questions. Deirdre Madeleine Smith posits that \u201ca great deal of care and examination are required for the radical potential of the multispecies family to be realized and for the structural dominion over the other of the human-pet relationship to be mitigated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this issue, we address love, mutual help, and collaboration among close circles, friendship and solidarity, family spats transformed into works of art, stories recounted, and experiences shared. Family stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Translated from the French by K\u00e4the Roth<\/strong><\/p>\n