Fashioning Critical Theory

Long discussion of Julia Kristeva's The Powers of Horror, with special attention to how her theory of abjection informs political strategies of oppression and exploitation rooted in the body. Our discussion works through the conception of the abject and its relation to misogyny and patriarchal cultural formation and reproduction, with particular attention to the aging feminine body, the "formless" and "plump" girl body (Nabokov's words and example), and how abjection sits at the center of our cultural-political imagination.

What is Fashioning Critical Theory?

Podcasted conversation on critical and literary theory, drawing on a range of theorists from Europe, the United States, Caribbean, and Latin America. Our title is drawn from Audre Lorde's essay "Poetry Is Not a Luxury," where she writes that poetry fashions a language where words do not yet exist. How does theory make words and world new, attuned, and embedded within inventive and inventing lived-experience, tradition, and cultural production?