The family subjected to a conceptual engineering exercise

Twisting the term in search for a careful alternative from the queer pedagogy of affections

Abstract

Counter-narrativizing the idea of family, or even talking about abolishing it, seems imperative for our recovery from all the violence that accompanies the struggles for the liberties of sexual and gender dissidence. Additionally, are the demands, past and present, for other ways of being in the world and relating to others outside of monogamous cis-sexual heterosexual life pathways; this despite claims that nothing is more important than the family.

We know that there is something frightening when one discusses abolition, as Lewis (2023) notes, because this provokes a rather frightening sentimental challenge: “but, if I love my family!”

The present work intends, through an exercise of conceptual engineering, to analyze the family, remembering that signifiers are not essential, but simple objects of action, tools that we produce to face reality and, therefore, elements susceptible to evaluation and reparation. The concept of family does not seem to be working, so we try to address what may be going wrong and we offer a reflection, favorable to the abolitionist position, accompanied by a proposal of socio-educational intervention, framed in a queer affective pedagogy, as a result of rethinking that place of belonging, where to feel safe and  engage in world-making.