In praise of disquiet

‘In praise of disquiet’ situates feminist-memoir writing as an embodied artistic process and argues that this form of writerly practice provides a method to work through affective individual and cultural experiences of ‘snapping’; of breaking out and down; of refusing to carry on. I reflect on my own writing practice as a method of writing myself back together again in the aftermath of a feminist snap moment. I argue that the literary form of feminist-memoir is an empowering and critical tool that can be used to challenge the pervasive myth of living and working to achieve the impossibility of the good life. Feminist-memoir writing as literary method can be used to empower the writing–speaking subject and simultaneously critique and challenge the capitalist social codes, values, systems and institutions that have commingled to create the compounded stresses that so often lead to a snap.