CONSTRUCTING SAFE SPACES The potential of performing feminist critical utopia analyzed through zine-making

Abstract

Safe spaces are constructed to offer a space of acceptance to an otherwise marginalized or vulnerable group. This thesis explores the connections between safe spaces and feminist (critical) utopianism through their inherent paradoxality. While safe spaces attempt to make people feel included, they often function through the exclusion of others. Just like utopias, they contradict themselves. Here, I analyze these dynamics and explore how they can be a fruitful catalyst for social change as they may defy dominant performativity to enable instead glimpses of utopian performatives (Dolan, 2005). Through utopian performatives, we peek into visions of a different present, enabling us to live a different future. This is illustrated by cases in the field with environmental activists in their safe spaces and my own experimentation with building safe space through creative participatory research methods. Aesthetic praxes play an important role in these enactments and this is why I have used (collaborative) zine-making as a method of analysis that mirrors and acts out the dynamics that are the subject of this research. I conclude that, when constructed consciously, safe spaces may make us aware of other selfcontradicting structures we have built around us such as inclusions and exclusions, identity politics and divides between nature and culture. Combining this with performative utopian creative practices may then allow us to realize our position within and as a part of a world consisting of intricate relations and give us opportunities to create our own.