Writing Subaltern Bodies into Psychoanalysis: Autotheory Outside Acceptability

• Published in: Studies in gender and sexuality Vol. 26; no. 2; pp. 71 - 74
• Main Authors: Merson, Molly, Steele, Jamie, Westmoreland, Laura C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 03.04.2025
• ISSN: 1524-0657; 1940-9206
• DOI: 10.1080/15240657.2025.2503581

This introduction to the special issue on Writing Subaltern Bodies into Psychoanalysis: Autotheory Outside Acceptability presents the editors' process of generating the idea, presenting on this topic, and being invited to assemble these works to add to psychoanalytic literature on theories of bodily relation. In the face of entrenched psychoanalytic hierarchies set on stabilizing and disciplining the subaltern, the editors find it imperative to continue adding to emerging and prominent literature that erodes the need to preserve these hierarchies and instead offers multiplicity, plurality, and new representations in psychoanalysis of common, yet singular, experiences rarely spoken from the position of the subject. This issue centers autotheory as a way of making theory in the face of limited representation. This introduction ends with an invitation to the reader to make their own theory from lived experience and psychoanalytic reflection in order to recenter curiosity and creativity, which can often be stifled or absented in the service of maintaining normative hierarchies.