By CAROLINE ROONEY – Oct. 18th at 6 pm London time/ 7 pm Berlin time/ 8 pm Cape Town and Jerusalem time/ 1 pm New York Time/ 12 noon Chicago time/ 10 am Vancouver time

Part of the Psychoanalysis and Politics series Crises and Transmission

(See below the picture to register for this event)

This presentation will begin through tracing how what is termed ‘gender ideology’ and, beyond this, contemporary forms of identity politics arose in part as a critical response to ‘New French Feminism’, or the radical feminism that emerged in the wake of the May ‘68 revolution in France. It will go on to raise the question of whether ‘woke’ culture constitutes a commodification of the left, and contrast this with the wave of Arab uprisings that began in Tunisia 2010 and spread across North Africa and the Middle East. Attention will be drawn to how ‘the revolution is a woman’ became one of the main slogans of revolutionary movements across North Africa and the Middle East, and a theoretical consideration of this slogan will be offered through an improvised approach to the Lacanian notions of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real.

Caroline Rooney is Professor Emeritus of African and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Kent. Her work engages with anti-colonial liberation movements in Africa and the Middle East, and her most recent book is Creative Radicalism in the Middle East: Culture and the Arab Left After the Uprisings (I.B.Tauris, 2020). Her other books include African Literature, Animism and Politics (Routledge 2000) and Decolonising Gender: Literature and a Poetics of the Real (2007).

Register

Discounted ticket for artists, freelancers, and, students

Terms and conditions: Please register early. If you haven’t registered at least half an hour before the seminar starts, your participation cannot be guaranteed. Your ticket will only be refunded if the seminar is cancelled or postponed. If you have registered for a seminar and miss out for whatever reason, you can e-mail psychoanalysis.politics[at]gmail.com and ask for a private copy of the talk minus the discussion, which will be ready a few days after the event. For those who haven’t registered for a seminar, the video will be available for rental after a few days, see Films. 

Image: Gigi Ibrahim (2023) Anti Sexual Harassment March to Tahrir Square in Egypt, Feb. 6th 2013. Source: Wikimedia Commons.