‘Sick Sick Sick’ : The Books of Ornery Women
A reading project examining a radical or ‘bludgeoned’ subjectivity of female writers | Session Five, Travis Jeppeson, The Suiciders, CCA Clubroom, Thursday 29 May, 6.30pm
A road trip to the end of the world.
SESSION FIVE | 6:30pm, CCA CLUBROOM, THU 29 MAY, 2014
Travis Jeppesen, The Suiciders, 2013, Semiotext(e) (a novel from the Native Agents series)
Our readings contrast the work of new female writers emerging from the online Alt-Lit scene with the late nineties Semiotext(e) Native Agents publications under the editorial directorship of Chris Kraus, in addition to recuperating earlier women’s literature such as The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. We seek to explore the tensions between language, sociology, subjectivity and power-relations, their impact upon gender and the ways in which they take form in the text. As readers, we have the opportunity to revive inherited post-structuralist feminist (and their questionably excessive) ideals, bringing them face to face with contemporary radical subjective writings to address how gendered language can disrupt expected hierarchical sequences or to what extent it can reproduce them.
In November we began by reading Kate Zambreno’s Heroines, 2012, alongside a screening of Věra Chytilová’s New Wave film Daisies . In February we continued our reading with Chris Kraus’ seminal confessional memoir I Love Dick, 1997, which exposes Kraus’ desire-written pursuit of theorist Dick Hebdige in collaboration with her husband Sylvère Lotringer. Chris Kraus’ Gravity & Grace, 1996, was screened in the cinema for both reading group members and non-members.
For the third session in March, we stayed with the semantics of the female voice and read Katherine Angel’s Unmastered: A Book On Desire, Most Difficult To Tell, 2012, alongside Anne Carson’s essay The Gender of Sound, 1992. In April, the fourth session led us to discuss Beatriz Preciado’s Testo Junkie, 2013.
Contact readers@mapmagazine.co.uk for further information, to make comment, or to submit proposals.
Initiated by Emma Balkind and Laura Edbrook in association with MAP
With thanks to The MIT Press, Feminist Press, Penny-Ante Editions and CCA, Glasgow for their support
