Between mother and daughter: Brown erotics and sacred notes.

Area of Science:

• Cultural Studies
• Gender Studies
• Postcolonial Studies

Background:

• The term "lesbian" is often narrowly defined by sexual identity and practices.
• Diasporic and postcolonial contexts present unique challenges to understanding female relationships and desire.
• Maternal relationships can be sites of both cultural transmission and feminist resistance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To offer an alternative ontology and epistemology of the term "lesbian."
• To explore the concept of "brown erotics" within a mother-daughter relationship.
• To examine how "lesbian" can be understood as a mode of being beyond sexual identity.

Main Methods:

• Autoethnographic approach using personal memory and childhood experiences.
• Interdisciplinary analysis incorporating geographic, historical, biopolitical, economic, embodied, affective, esthetic, and immaterial variables.
• Close reading of formative moments including Quranic pedagogy, classical voice, singing, and dance lessons.

Main Results:

• Identifies homosocial and homoerotic spaces as sites of "brown maternal knowledges" and feminist transgressions.
• Demonstrates that "lesbian" as a term and mode of being is not solely tied to sexual identity or practices.
• Reveals how desire and secrecy are influenced by global capital, postcolonial respectability, nation, and compulsory heterosexuality.

Conclusions:

• The mother-daughter relationship serves as a crucial site for understanding "brown erotics" and feminist becomings.
• Living a feminist life and "being and becoming a lesbian" involves navigating complex intersections of identity, culture, and power.
• Reconceptualizes "lesbian" as a broader framework for understanding female relationality and resistance in diasporic contexts.