Friday, 14 December 2018, 7.30 pm, diffrakt | centre for theoretical periphery
Multi-media conversation with
Sophie A. Lewis | Indiana Seresin | Hannah Wallenfels
Whether we look at Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time or Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, in both science fiction and existing (capitalist) gestational surrogacy the use and representation of reproduction technologies appears increasingly dystopian. The utopian counterpart that was once envisioned, for example by 1970s queer polymaternalists and family abolitionists or by Piercy’s protagonist Connie, who experiences a decentralized anarchist world in which all kind of -isms and injustices are things of the past, seems to have been lost somewhere along the way. To recover some of these ideas, Sophie Lewis and Indiana Seresin will embark together – with Sonja Eismann as moderator and guide – on a voyage, drawing on philosophical pioneers like Shulamith Firestone, impulses from science fiction, and of course their own research in order to discuss explorations of utopian and dystopian dimensions of the current reality of reproduction in relation to imagined futures. They will touch on matters of belonging, the body, care work, the reluctance to theorize pregnancy as work, and the notion of work altogether, and look out for speculative horizons that might emanate once one is brave enough to transcend the usual discourses.
The event is part of the series SO FAR | Science-Fiction(s).
Graphic design: Anna-Luise Lorenz
