Faculty Spotlight: Sophie Lewis on Second Wave Feminism, Incipient Queerness, Auto-Analysis, and the Life of the Critic (ft. Paige Sweet)
Nov 17, 2023
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Scholar Sophie Lewis reflects on early experiences of injustice in middle-class institutions. They discuss overlooked insights from second wave feminists, time of transition from feudalism to capitalism, unruly undertows of entertainment, autotheory and autofiction, children's liberation, and the pin-up career of Barnacle the cat.
Sophie Lewis explores the intersection of second-wave feminism and incipient queerness within the context of Silvia Federici's insights on the witch as a figure of rebellion.
Lewis discusses the importance of autoanalysis as a tool for personal writing and self-reflection, extending beyond mere introspection.
Children's liberation is a crucial aspect of Lewis's utopian horizon and feminist activism, emphasizing the interconnectedness of reproductive freedom, gender self-determination, and challenging oppressive cultural norms.
Deep dives
Background and Academic Journey
Sophie Lewis, a writer and communist, shares her academic background studying English literature, science, and Marxist human geography. She discusses her transition from academia to becoming an independent scholar and teaching courses on feminist and queer theory.
Writing as Cultural Criticism
Lewis highlights the importance of cultural criticism in exploring various cultural artifacts and extracting political and utopian elements from them. She mentions her essays on topics such as reality TV, experimental poetry, and the Bridgerton television franchise, emphasizing the connection between cultural criticism and her theoretical investigations.
Autoanalysis and Personal Writing
The concept of autoanalysis is explored as Lewis delves into the idea of writing oneself and how it expands beyond self-reflection. She discusses her experience with autoanalysis, particularly in an essay where she created a persona of a psychotherapist to engage in correspondence with her father. Lewis reflects on the challenges and achievements of personal writing in this context.
Children's Liberation and Feminism
Lewis considers children's liberation as an integral part of her utopian horizon and feminist activism. She examines the historical and political implications of children's marginalization and argues for the interconnectedness of reproductive freedom, gender self-determination, and the liberation of children. Lewis also comments on the current moral panic around children and the need to challenge oppressive cultural norms.
Reading Recommendations and Personal Interests
Lewis shares her recent reading interests, including trans speculative horror fiction and poetry. She also mentions her involvement with the Out of the Woods collective, an ecological writing group, and reflects on the dilemma of turning personal reading experiences into public posts.
In episode seven of Faculty Spotlight, Mark and Lauren sit down to chat with two BISR faculty whose interests, scholarly and otherwise, dovetail in fascinating ways—Sophie Lewis, writer, critic, and leading scholar of family abolition and the politics of reproduction; and Paige Sweet, writer, practicing psychoanalyst, and founder of the experimental writing project Infinite Text Collective. Following Sophie’s personal reflections on her early experiences of the injustices in-built into middle-class heteropatriarchal institutions like the family and formal schooling (“nothing is apolitical”), the four of them discuss: what previously overlooked insights one might still unearth from so-called second wave feminists like Silvia Federici (is the witch a figure of incipient queerness?); how fecund and fungible was the time of transition from feudalism to capitalism, not least for thinking with gender; the “unruly undertows” of popular and “low” entertainment (Chicken Run as exemplary Marxist-feminist cinema!); autotheory, autofiction, autoanalysis, and the affordances of writing from the self; why children’s liberation is to everyone’s benefit; and the erstwhile pin-up career of Barnacle the cat—with much else in between and besides.
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