Gender is a violent material reality and a domain of intelligibility. It is part of the system of signs that we use to make sense of one another. For centuries, feminists and queer theorists have asked, how do we escape, subvert, destroy the gender regime? This series of workshops and study groups explores these questions with explicit focus on trans liberation, the violent colonial history of the construction of gender and the relationship between gender, capitalism, language and aesthetics.
OCT 01 Working with Generosity with Mijke Van Der Drift
OCT 08 Liberatory Affects with Lola Olufemi
OCT 15 Study Group: Gender, Colonialism and The Family with Abeera Khan
OCT 22 Performance Lecture: Queer Cruising with Jacob V Joyce
OCT 01 | 6.30 - 9.30 PM Working with Generosity with Mijke Van Der Drift
In this workshop, participants are invited to explore through which frameworks “trans” is perceived: is it an identity, something you do, is it recognisable or illegible? Bringing the styles of thinking we use everyday to the forefront, enables figuring out what form of politics we could pursue. This will bring us to themes of complicity and generosity to figure out how we might reconsider our approaches to trans liberation and solidarity. Rather than seeing complicity as “bad” we will explore how the term can be used to ground us, and offer new insights for activism. Working with generosity enables to question what form collectivity can take, when criticality is not the guiding term for staging politics.
OCT 08 | 6.30 - 9.30 PM Liberatory Affects with Lola Olufemi
Cultural production and aesthetics are one means through which the violence of gender is maintained. By contrasting the fascistic affects about gender produced by the far-right with the liberatory visions of gendered liberation expressed by radical social movements, this writing workshop will think through the relationship between gender, language, capitalism and aesthetics. It is possible to use language to express our complex, deeply personal relationships to gender? How does language shape our sense of gender’s materiality and how can we articulate a collective vision of social life free from gendered domination?
OCT 15 | 6.30 - 9.30 PM Study Group: Gender, Colonialism and The Family with Abeera Khan
This study group will explore the colonial histories which shaped the construction of gender as we know it. It will analyse connections between race, gender and empire and the impact of colonialism in the affirmation of the gender binary, conceptions of sex and the family.
OCT 22 | 6.30 - 9.30 PM Performance Lecture: Queer Cruising with Jacob V Joyce
This interactive workshop for women, trans and nonbinary people will prioritise people of the African diaspora. It will include a collective reading of Poetry is Not a Luxury by Audre Lorde, a directed exercise on subversive connections and furtive exchange then a collective poetry writing exercise in relation to Zanele Muholi's work.