O’Byrne’s Lecture on Kinship
O’Byrne brings up her lecture by talking about the idea of “where you come from is who you are”. Henceforth, to know who you are is to know where you come from. There is a sense of belonging or solidarity that comes from kin. O’Byrne brings up many questions in her talk.
What really is kin? How much do we really know about where we come from? Why are we so committed to having a connection with those who share the same blood? How is kinship related to injustice?
O’Byrne first starts off her lecture talking about the origins of belonging in a historical, scientific, and linguistic sense. What I found interesting was when she mentioned that our own DNA tests show that who we are as individuals is actually very blurred. A question that she made me ponder about was what a white supremacist would do if the white supremacist finds out that there is a small percentage of African ancestry in the kin. She then delves into an even deeper meaning of human lineage. She brought up the fact that we cannot appropriate our own lineages. One cannot “not have been born”. What was interesting was that she brought up the other point of on the other hand, the parent could not have known that the child would be “you”. However, I found her talk on the types of belonging very difficult to understand. She mentions an oceanic, or earthly, type of belonging as well as a transcendence type of belonging.
In the second part of the lecture, she talked more about the idea of kinship and the injustices that are behind it. We as humans are all committed to our own “blood” and who we are is supposedly determined from where we came from. As a result, genocidal violence, and injustice spurns form this ideology. She also brings up the question of becoming kin other than in blood? This question made me think about the connection between a really good friend and how a bond with a really good friend could be comparable to a bond between blood. O’Byrne also talks about how the alienation of a child from his/her parents a form of injustice. Her Fredrick Douglas example in which Douglas’ mother walked 12miles just to see her alienated child was very interesting.
Overall her lecture was very interesting and it got me to think a lot about kinship and it’s role it plays with us as individuals as well as with us as a society. O’Byrne ends off her lecture by talking about what we could do. She asserts that we should acknowledge both types of belonging. Belonging to belong as well as belonging to a pure belonging.
Hi James, Thank you for sharing about the lecture–I was unable to attend but wanted to hear more about the content. To that end, could you please expand a little bit about what you mean by “She asserts that we should acknowledge both types of belonging. Belonging to belong as well as belonging to a pure belonging”? I’m not sure what you mean by that.
Your question of “what would a white supremacist do if they found out there is a small percentage of African ancestry in the kin” reminds me of a novel I read which has exactly that situation embedded within the plot. Just in case you’re interested, the title is: Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
Hi Pamela! Sorry for the late response. “Belonging to belong as well as belonging to a pure belonging” was what she ended her lecture off by saying. In my interpretation I think that this shows the two ways of belonging. Belonging to belong would refer to what society tells you as what you belong to. For example, I would say that belonging to belong would mean that you are basically assigned certain roles. Like as a student, a son, a female/male, etc. In essence, you are “belonging” just due to society’s interpretation of your role. However, the second way would be belonging to a pure belonging which I would think means to actually “feel solidarity”. In a sense, you feel comfort or a feeling of acceptance in your own relationship with others.
Both are hard to explain and my own interpretation may be incorrect but I feel like those two aspects of belonging are essential to understand.