I think I am going to get more involved in Occupy Wall Street, in whatever way I can. I have been provoked. I hear that if you can’t join them, you beat them. Yes, I was provoked, first, by Pierce Penniless’s excellent call to participation, and then – this morning – by Naomi Wolf’s appallingly [...]
Archive for the ‘literature/critique’ Category
Naomi Wolf is no Wall Street occupier either
Posted in America, bankers, banking, banks, essentialism, feminism, gender, How to Occupy the moral and political high ground, Naomi Wolf, New York, NYC, Obama, Occupy Wall Street, occupywallst, occupywallstreet, politics, protest, revolution now, shock doctrine, The Observer on November 6, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Evolutionary Psychology Still Sucks (At Dawn)—a radical polyamorous critique of Chris Ryan & Cacilda Jethá’s Sex At Dawn “phenomenon”
Posted in Chris Ryan, essentialism, feminism, gender, love, monogamy, nature, New York, NYC, polyamory, sexuality on September 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Unlike the subject material, this critique is genuinely written by two people: Carl van Tonder and Sophielle. We each contributed about half the verbiage, and have carefully edited each other’s work. It has been challenging to work so collaboratively (apart from anything else, wasting a lot of time wasted waiting for PrimaryPad to fix their [...]
Fish Tank [Andrea Arnold]
Posted in film on September 13, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
New York: it’s a bit full on, isn’t it. Yesterday evening was intended to be crammed with three different events and a meeting, after my 2pm class on Émile Durkheim (whom I hadn’t properly read, which made me feel crappy). In the end, I opted for going straight home with an English film. About an [...]
Glyn Maxwell & Luke Bedford’s SEVEN ANGELS, five of whom walk away from climate crisis, occupy the Oxford Playhouse for one night only, surrounded by minions from Friends of the Earth
Posted in climate justice, theatre on July 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Glyn Maxwell has written exquisitely about his project in The Guardian. I wish I’d read his article before I went. Though an opera, this once-off Oxford Playhouse production about apocalypse, climate change, consumption and extraction could conceivably have expressed its meanings less opaquely. Now I see, and am retrospectively moved by, the poignant reflections on [...]
Molly Naylor’s ‘Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You’ – quick review – Oxford Playhouse
Posted in theatre on June 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I am glad I went to see ‘Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You’ by Molly Naylor. Any squeamishness I had about treatments of collective national victimhood – like 7/7 – was adequately allayed by Naylor’s fantastically subtle, Generation X like spoken word about a particular overdetermined moment on the Aldgate tube in [...]
Sex work, sex workers, prostitutes … notes provoked by a friend and a link slamming the IUSW
Posted in feminism, gender, sex work on May 13, 2011 | 9 Comments »
I don’t want this post to become a stubborn outpost of resistance, especially as the views I express(ed) in it are based on intuitive thinking and *not* an extensive research project into the sex industry. I have no interest in defending the IUSW at all – I don’t know much about it and share my [...]
“Open Sauce” – the Radical X collective’s new ‘feminist pornography’ project that “playfully questions the notion of ‘plagiarism’ and embraces the erotics of cross-fertilisation, blending and borrowing.”
Posted in feminism, gender, literature/critique, Queer politics on May 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Radical X is a project I’ve been collaborating with, and it’s now a finalist for the Erotic Awards 2011. It is a wiki, and it is pretty self-explanatory at its wonderful web-site here: http://radicalx.ox4.org/opensauce I’ve created a spoof series of 3 mini essays on the evolution of the OPEN SAUCE wiki’s texts, the many versions of an [...]
‘After Troy’ – Glyn Maxwell and Alex Clifton bring the brutalised women of Troy to the Oxford Playhouse in a fusion of two Euripidean dramas
Posted in theatre on March 3, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
AFTER TROY This is an incredible project – two plays, a decade or so apart, fused to provide a broader, kaleidoscopic insight into the brutalisation of the women of Troy by the ancient Greeks. After Troy was going to be ‘Sex in the Ruins’ initially, but curdled, deepened, and lost the irresponsible serving of “sex”. [...]
A Dream Play is really fucking beautiful. Strindberg – at the Oxford Playhouse – and every bit the wondrous feat a certain Griff Rees talked to me about two years ago
Posted in literature/critique, theatre on February 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
In 1902, Strindberg wrote to his German translator: “Understand The Dream Play? … Everything absurd becomes probable. People flit past and a few traits are sketched in, the sketches merge … Time and space do not exist; a minute is like many years; no seasons; the snow covers the countryside in summer, the lime tree [...]
>Furcht und Ellend< in of Oxford – a student production of Brecht's scenes, translated as "Fear and Misery in the Third Reich"
Posted in theatre on February 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Ben Martin and Olly Murphy’s production ‘Fear and Misery in the Third Reich’ (an original translation of ‘Furcht und Ellend’, by Murphy, and a largely original interpretation of the anti-Nazi domestic scenes, by Martin) is intense, claustrophobic, ambitious, and interesting. It doesn’t always succeed, but then, I reckon Brecht is one of the hardest and [...]
God we really Ought to Do Something: How to Question the World and Climate Change from the Perspective of London’s middle classes: “Greenland” at the National Theatre (a collaborative production – Buffini, Charman, Skinner and Thorne)
Posted in climate justice, theatre on January 30, 2011 | 1 Comment »
I saw the collaborative Greenland production at the Lyttelton (National Theatre) and am glad I did. For personal reasons, I badly need to see, and think about, if good theatre about climate change is possible. Or if, as the saying goes, when you mix art and politics too earnestly, you do a terrible disservice to [...]
On ‘Black Swan’, this new Aronofsky film with Mila Kunis, Natalie Portman and Vincent Cassel
Posted in film on January 22, 2011 | 1 Comment »
My gay brother raved about Black Swan. An anarchist friend of mine surprised me by expressing a wish to see it. I had seen a trailer and thought to myself that I would rather not succumb to the cheap appeal of a sexualised feminine Jekyll/Hyde fable that would ultimately vindicate some proto-fascist womanly ideal or [...]
Naomi Wolf is no feminist say I
Posted in feminism, gender, Queer politics, revolution now, shock doctrine on November 27, 2010 | 18 Comments »
Naomi Wolf spoke to seventy people or so, assembled in a central Oxford college yesterday. The event was billed like this:
What are our urgent priorities for gender equality – in Oxford and beyond? Join us for the closing session of the Oxford University Gender Equality Festival, opened by Naomi Wolf, leading American political commentator, author, journalist, and writer of the feminist classic “The Beauty Myth”. There will be contributions from student leaders and campaigners from a range of political backgrounds, followed by an open consensus-based discussion (which worked fantastically for our opening night with 60-odd contributors).
I can state the easiest and most obvious things first: Wolf spoke about no gender equality priorities “beyond” Oxford. Wolf allowed for no contributions from student leaders and campaigners, but spoke unstoppably, condescendingly, and monomaniacally for two entire hours (well over her allotted time). Wolf made it clear she dislikes consensus-based discussion, preferring rather to cast a kind of preacher-like spell over her captive audience, which had a ‘divide and rule’ effect.
One cannot divorce form from content. I will attempt to get my expostulations about form out of the way first, however.
“Tamlane” in Oxford: fairies vs. mortals straight up through incredibly professional modern ballet (but the misogyny of the fairytale form remains un-queered)
Posted in culture, feminism, gender on November 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
_ Wadham college breeds good things: radicalism, queer festivals, and lately, the show Tamlane. Unlike some incarnations of the former two, however, every aspect of this stunningly well rehearsed full-length fairytale choreography is charmingly unpretentious (like the personality of its creator, Hannah Moore). Not for her – or her thirty odd cast and crew – [...]
“EATING ORDERS”: anorexia/bulimia, feminism, gender identity and self help
Posted in culture, eating disorders, feminism, gender on November 17, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Yesterday, the attendance for EATING ORDERS (Facebook event here) was unexpectedly high. It was a challenging and exhilaratingly content-ful, thoughtful session. Hannah Tickle and Nicola Byrom presented two different aspects of their work pioneering Student Run Self Help, as well as their research in the Psychology Department. Laurie Penny described her personal and theoretical understanding [...]
Sophie’s Twitter Feed
- Those speculating were huddled by the auctioneer's desk trying to haggle over crisis-stricken families' houses amid the beautiful din #o4o ~ 2 weeks ago
- Waiting now for nine arrestees at today's o4o sing-along-auction-blockade to be released at (cont) http://t.co/6gl6SUiL ~ 2 weeks ago
- #o4o action in Brooklyn Supreme Court kicked off just now, to resist banks' foreclosing on people's (cont) http://t.co/80aPmWLO ~ 2 weeks ago
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