Feminist Duration: Juliet Jacques: Forms of Resistance in Trans Life Writing
November 26 2020 | 19:00 – 21:00 GMT | Online
This event focuses on writer and filmmaker Juliet Jacques, and her writing on the possibilities for trans representation in life writing. It includes an introductory talk by Jacques and an out-loud reading from her 2017 article, ‘Forms of Resistance: Uses of Memoir, Theory, and Fiction in Trans Life Writing’.
‘Forms of Resistance’ explores how trans-identified authors have used fiction, or a blurring of boundaries between autobiography and fiction, to resist some of the structural and social limits of trans life writing. The essay goes on to discuss representations of trans people and transphobia in mainstream media in the United Kingdom, including Juliet’s own experience of autobiographical writing in a newspaper blog and a memoir, and how authors might use a greater variety of fictional (in addition to or instead of autobiographical) techniques to explore a wider range of gender positions.
Bio
Juliet Jacques is a writer and filmmaker based in London. Her published books include Rayner Heppenstall: A Critical Study (2007) and Trans: A Memoir (2015); a volume of short stories entitled Variations is due for publication in June 2021. ‘Forms of Resistance: Uses of Memoir, Theory, and Fiction in Trans Life Writing’ was published in the 2017 issue of Life Writing.
Thursday 11 February, 2021, 19.00-21.00 GMT | Online
Rescheduled from April 2020 due to Covid-19, this session, planned to take place at the South London Gallery, will now be held as an online Zoom session. It will include an introduction to the article within its cultural and political context, and small out-loud readings.
This instalment of the Feminist Duration Reading Group, led by Flora Dunster, looks to debates around censorship, past and present, to consider how, why, and to what effect a feminist argument can be made for limiting free expression.
Focusing on the differing feminist perspectives around practices like pornography and S/M during the 1970s and 80s, the session will consider arguments made for and against censorship, the impact they had on organising and activism, and what we can draw from them in our present.
Sue O’Sullivan
The meeting will be introduced by Sue O’Sullivan, a member of the London Women’s Liberation Workshop; Feminists Against Censorship; Spare Rib collective; Feminist Review collective; Red Rag; and Sheba Press.
Reading
We will read together from O’Sullivan’s co-authored article (with Susan Ardill) “Upsetting an Applecart: Difference, Desire, and Lesbian Sadomasochism” (1986), with additional texts TBD.
Link to Reading: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xfe_1PJ5lMlXOMlZbQZTTRNdEyUA44bl/view?usp=sharing
No advance reading is required as we will read together, out loud, on the evening.
Image: Lauren Craig presenting material from X Marks the Spot, Women’s Art Library, London, 2020. Photograph by Helena Reckitt.
Artist Lauren Craig leads this online restorative writing circle that explores where the desire lines of our practices meet. Taking a reparative approach, we will create a shared gaze for the archives our bodies hold. What are our stories? What are their formations? How do we listen and share? An invitation, a call to action, to gather in a way where rendering our collective experience creates ethical, cultural memory. The circle offers ‘microacts’ artworks such as collages and slide walks to create writing provocations.
A space to remember and make-believe, make sense of things, not understand, and not be understood. Demarcating the space, you are drawn to being within.
Expression of Interest
Spaces for this online workshop will be limited to maintain a mood of intimacy and exchange. If you would like to take part, please send a short Expression of Interest by Thursday 8th July to feministduration@gmail.com. We will let you know within one week if you have been selected, and provide further details of the session.
Lauren Craig
Lauren Craig is a London-born artist of Jamaican heritage and a founding member of X Marks the Spot collective. Her practice encompasses her lived experience and auto-ethnographic approach as a cultural researcher, full-spectrum doula and celebrant, living and working in London and Central Italy. Through photography, video, text, installation, performance and writing, she explores equally broad themes of ecofeminism, spirituality, health, memory and the propositional. Craig’s current research/practice incorporates restorative writing circles with photographic, moving image and therapeutic and reparative archival methods to create and document the creative genealogies of contemporary celebration, rituals and commemoration within the practices of womxn of colour artists and their allies.
Feminist Duration
This workshop is part of the Feminist Duration series which explores under-known texts, ideas, and movements associated with earlier periods of feminist activity in the UK. Originally designed as part of a year-long residency at the South London Gallery, and rescheduled online in the wake of the COVID pandemic, the programme juxtaposes earlier moments of feminist with current urgencies and struggles.
By restoring material texture to overlooked political and cultural movements, it seeks to resist versions of the past that reduce feminist struggle to one-dimensional stereotypes. Looking to the past to activate its nascent potential, the programme aims to identify tools that can inspire and enrich further collective action, promoting the intergenerational exchange of knowledge and experience. While honouring earlier feminisms, the series also highlights how collaboration, difference, and dissent have characterised previous feminist movements, and how feminists have both negotiated, and failed to significantly attend to, differences between themselves.
Feminist Duration is generously supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership.