Communes, Nostalgia, and Political Strategy

Abby and Patrick are joined by writer Grace Byron, author of the fantastic new novel Herculine. Alternately hilarious and terrifying, Herculine is the story of a young trans woman who leaves a frustrating life in New York City to join an erstwhile high school lover in a trans separatist commune in rural Indiana. But the community proves far from perfect, and the narrator soon finds herself enmeshed in a pressure-cooker milieu of personal jealousies and erotic rivalries, all with occult overtones – and there are literal demons, too. Abby, Patrick, and Grace reflect on the themes of the book, and probe the broader questions it addresses. How might trauma shape our ideas about healing and our pursuit of transformative experiences – in psychotherapy and beyond? How does identity relate to desire, how does theory relate to practice, and how might hegemonic structures reassert themselves in power dynamics within marginalized communities? What are the uses of utopian fantasies, and how do we square them with the real-world challenges of building solidarity? The three explore all these questions, as well as the power of religious symbolism, the practice of “conversion therapy,” media representations of the demonic, and more!  

Texts cited:

Grace Byron, Herculine: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Herculine/Grace-Byron/9781668087862 

Grace Byron, “Idle Worship: Fairy Tales of Conversion,” in Parapraxis: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/idle-worship

Grace Byron, “Repossessed,” in The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/latest/repossessed-byron

McKenzie Wark, “Dear Cis Analysts: A Call for Reparations,” in Parapraxis: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/dear-cis-analysts

Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini, Gender Without Identity: https://www.uitbooks.com/shop/gender-without-identity

Imogen Binnie, Nevada: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374606619/nevada/

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