(Wo)monstrous suturing: Woman doctoral students cutting together/apart

Abstract

This paper centers the experiences and understandings of women doctoral students during two separate focus groups and collaborative collages. (Re)theorizing “monsters” as “intra- sectional” through Karen Barad’s and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s scholarship, we (re)position the “monstrous” as agentive and self-creative concepts. We explore the concept of (wo)monsters and the (wo)monstrous: empowered women participants who, through their verbal and artistic participations, cut themselves, others, and the group together/apart. In making these cuttings, they worked to (re)suture themselves and their group(s) back together in (re)generative, (wo)monstrous ways. The women’s participations emphasized their (wo)monstrosities as affirmingly fantastical, imagining new ways of being and wreaking havoc on hegemony and hierarchy.