A response to: ‘Intimate Others and the Othering of intimates: The gendered psycho-politics of the entangled relational’ by Farhad Dalal (Dalal, 2020)

Abstract

Comments on an article by Farhad Dalal (see record [rid]2020-88908-001[/rid]). The commentator claims to an identity position perform an essentialism that is not in keeping with my desire for nomadic, fluid boundaries and de-territorialization. Within the space of five sentences, the commentator finds himself slipping habitually into an unhelpful binary of Othering based on gender and sexuality, which is ‘structured by a relation of negations, and by re-affirming these negations’. However, with all the inherent aporia of holding a position, aware that all positions are inevitably ‘implicated’ and risking a kind of ‘epistemic violence’, the commentator holds a position as an anti-racist feminist, and anti-capitalist activist. Rather than concentrating on the predicaments of difference our energies might be put to better use in concentrating on the predicaments of positionality. Relational entanglement revolves around the conundrum of giving an account of oneself, whilst being held to account, that goes to the heart of being in group analysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)