Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery

Simone Fullagar is a Professor (women in sport) at Griffith University, Australia and was previously Chair of the Physical Culture, Sport and Health research group at the University of Bath, UK. As an interdisciplinary sociologist Simone undertakes research on physical cultures, gender and power, and embodied mental health and wellbeing. Her work draws upon post-structuralist feminist and new materialist theories.Wendy O’Brien is an adjunct Research Fellow and interdisciplinary sociologist working within the Griffith Business School. Drawing on theories of affect and new materialism her research explores mental health, women’s well-being, active embodiment, elite sport and liveability.Adele Pavlidis is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University, Australia. Her work focuses on affective-discursive relations and the ways health and wellbeing are enabled or impeded by a range of sport and physical cultural practices.

“Feminism and a Vital Politics of depression and recovery by Simone Fullagar, Wendy O’Brien and Adele Pavlidis … is an invitation to reconfigure discourses, imaginaries and narratives on mental health from a new materialist approach, by moving beyond individual problems to collective experiences that shape a feminist ethos.” (Marina Riera-Retamero, Matter, Journal of New Materialist Research, Vol. 1 (2), 2020)

• 1. Introduction: Towards a Vital Feminist Politics.- 2. RRhizomatic Movements and Gendered Knots of ‘Bad Feelings’.- 3. Reconfiguring Recovery Beyond Linearity.- 4. Motherhood, Hauntings and the Affective Arrangement of Care.- 5. Moving-Transforming Bodyminds.- 6. Creative Enactments in More-Than-Human Worlds.- 7. Reimagining Feminist Futures: Vital Politics, Disruptive Pedagogies.