Of mothers and monsters: Shannon Bell’s fast feminism and the radical pedagogy of sexual alterity

This article engages the work of Shannon Bell through a series of conceptual, aesthetic, and autobiographical encounters unfolding across dreams, archives, literature, cinema, and conversation. Drawing on Bell’s fast feminism and staircase method, the authors bring into relation ethnographic fragments from their research with John Robin Sharpe (1933–2015), Catherine Breillat’s film Last Summer (2023), writings of Tony Duvert, and Ordóñez’ formulation of becoming-maternal. Approaching these materials as affective and sensorial scenes rather than stable objects of interpretation, the article traces unexpected connections among youth, sexuality, maternity, kinship, and embodiment. Through Bell’s commitment to conceptual movement, the authors explore minor archives of queer intergenerationality, the cultural production of childhood innocence, and the interpretive habits through which figures such as the child, the mother, and the paedophile acquire regulatory force. In doing so, the article highlights Bell’s importance for critical inquiry into affect, pleasure, and heterodox forms of truth-telling.