Our Journey

The seeds for this project were planted in the Fall of 2021 with two of us meeting at IAMAS where Akanksha was presenting and Mairi was moderating the same panel on motherhood and intergenerational trauma. That prompted our virtual collaboration and repeated, cyclical ruminations that always brought us back to this core belief that mothers are central to who/what we become- whether it’s the stories they tell us, the traumas they pass on, the love and food through which they nourish us (or not), and so on. Over the course of two seasons, we felt compelled to keep thinking-with each other, and remaining in generative conversations. Longing to expand the conversation, we considered ways to invite others in to the carrier bag that was holding our desires to reimagine our worlds beyond scarcity and individual competition. Our carrier bags were being filled by others who in different ways were attending to embodiment, mothering, and teaching and learning, and we took the risk of writing to those who became our Coven of the 13 Moons (see about us) to invite them to join us for a sustained conversation, which was made possible by our very implications in the systems of competition (e.g., the support of SSHRC, IAMAS, University of Calgary, SUNY Plattsburgh, and American Canary). 

Our thinking-feeling through this terrain, rife with worldmaking possibilities, our own carrier bags have expanded to include the generous gifts of Sheliza, Stephanie, and Zoya—each of whom has been vital in the shaping of things to come.

So, we ask ourselves, and now you, if we are in this moment where the importance of the body is gradually being acknowledged in white, western, epistemic spaces such as the academe which has traditionally been premised on the mind/body duality, how can we talk about the body without talking about the mothering, daughtering, caregiving/taking body? 

This is why we have gathered here, hopefully to think about carrier bags (Le Guin)- our mothers, perhaps ourselves- as the first environment that holds, nurtures, and brings forth life. How do we center a carrier bag theory of knowledge and pedagogical praxis in neoliberal institutions premised on the narrative of the action hero- narrative that progresses linearly, from the beginning, only to end with the victory of the individual, at all costs? If you have found your way to our website-carrier bag, we invite you into the conversation, to the reimagining and reworlding possibilities