Gendered affective infrastructure: Feminist epistemology and mutual support in a life‐history storytelling group of older Mizrahi women

Abstract

This article conceptualizes life history groups as gendered affective infrastructure: relational, temporal, and interactional formations through which affect circulates, gendered pain is collectively held, and mortality is acknowledged. Rather than producing linear individual narratives, knowledge emerges through shared emotions, silences, tensions, and negotiated memories. Gendered affective infrastructure conceptualizes the life history group as a “soft container” of affect, where feminist knowledge is generated through the entanglement of bodies, narratives, and space in ongoing collective interaction. The article examines a life history group of older Mizrahi Jewish women (of Middle Eastern descent) in a lower‐income Tel Aviv neighborhood undergoing migration and urban transformation. Drawing on 29 ethnographic sessions conducted over eight months, it demonstrates how the group functioned as a lived infrastructure through which participants confronted gendered and age‐related vulnerabilities. Building on feminist epistemologies, the analysis shows how embodied, dialogical storytelling challenges research paradigms that privilege coherence and closure, instead cultivating openness, resilience, and shared meaning‐making. In doing so, the group fostered enduring relations of care and emotional support that enabled women to collectively navigate hardship. The article contributes to feminist ethnography and urban theory by positioning storytelling as a relational practice that generates knowledge, sustains care, and supports marginalized communities.