Feminist Duration Reading Group: Linda Zerilli & Anne Boyer
Tue 4 Oct, 7pm
SPACE Mare Street
FREE
The Feminist Duration Reading Group focuses on under-known and under-appreciated texts, movements, groups and struggles. It meets on the first Tuesday of every month, at 7pm, at SPACE in London Fields, and is open to all.
For the next meeting, in a session organized by Amy Tobin, we will look at the work of two writers, the political theorist Linda Zerilli and the poet Anne Boyer.
These two quite different texts – a chapter from Zerilli's book Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom (2005) and a section of Boyer's Garments Against Women (2016) – both circle around the problem of gender as a social category. While Boyer writes about not writing, and produces texts about her inability to be productive along the lines of literary success, Zerilli proposes that feminism would find its most radical constitution beyond the woman question: in other words, in an undefined 'abyss' of 'freedom'.
The chapter from Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom focuses on the Milan Women's Bookstore collective – whose practice has been a recurring focus of the Feminist Duration Reading Group – and the possibility of working politically without organising around female identity and instead through 'the willingness to make judgments and promises to one another in public space'.
The two texts propose different approaches to feminist political struggle through negativity.
We will read these texts – or as much of them as time permits – out loud, together, on the evening. Please bring copies with you.
For a copy of this month's reading or if you would like to join the Feminist Duration Reading Group, please email feministduration@gmail.com
Now You Can Go
The Feminist Duration Reading Group on 1st December was the first in the Now You Can Go events series exploring feminist art, theory and activism that took place across The ICA, The Showroom, SPACE and Raven Row in December 2015.
