“Communion: Notes on Feminist Study, Radical Friendship, and the Art of Elizabeth Catlett.”

This paper argues that feminist world-building — in women of color friendships and across the academy — depends on scaffolding difference. Drawing on Audre Lorde’s 1977 work, we develop a theory of friendship that centers difference within feminist epistemology and racial struggle, following Lisa Tillman-Healy’s notion of friendship as method (2003). We analyze two prints by Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), whose transnational practice bridges Black and Mexican liberation struggles. Using hundred-word poem exercises (Stewart and Berlant, 2019), we reflect on the exhibition, Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary and All That It Implies, and on our friendship throughout the piece. We propose that difference is not a barrier but a source of communion — a method of feminist knowledge production across race and discipline.

By: Gwendolyn Berumen and Alexandra Thomas.

Forthcoming in Feral Feminisms.