What it is to Belong: A socio-cultural restorying of women’s longing and belonging

Abstract

This thesis examines the lived experience of longing and belonging via myth-based and personal storying practices. The process of storying provides the thesis’ conceptual and methodological remit and refers to the multiple ways we make sense through stories. Uniting storied practices and knowledges of five women living in Australia, the thesis develops an innovative approach to consider self-belonging, relational belonging and emplaced belonging. The research is transdisciplinary and intercultural. It develops conceptual interrelations between the disciplines of women’s studies, religion and human geography through explorations of Goddess feminisms, vernacular religion and more-than-human understandings. The convergence of these concepts builds and extends critical myth studies. Emerging from the thesis’ ethnographic method is an ethical imperative to prioritise relationally embodied meaning-making processes. Through the focus on relational intimacy and felt/sensed ways of being, the storied forms of belonging that emerge from the research practice take on new meaning and significance. This enables a re-conception of what it is to belong as a woman living on stolen lands. The myth-based stories explored by the research participants draw from European and Indigenous traditions. Their integration, as theory and practice, illustrates the affective relevance and potency of understanding human–Earth-kin relations as experiential, symbolic and mythic terrains that expand where and how belonging can be co-created. The research shows that stories provide critical ways of understanding belonging while also acting as agents for nurturing and cultivating belonging. This is explored via the central research methodology of a four-day residential retreat held on Guringai/Darkinjung Country (NSW, Australia) during which the research participants lived and storied together. This thesis identifies and examines the meaningful and emancipatory outcomes of ‘restorying’ belonging.