Feminist Duration Reading Group: Working Group

For the February meeting of the Feminist Duration Reading Group the focus will be on establishing a Working Group to develop future areas of collective research and discussion. If you would like to be part of this group, please come with your ideas.

The Feminist Duration Reading Group was established in Spring 2015. Its original focus was the under-known literature and collective practices of Italian feminisms. These were explored in a series of public events called ‘Now You Can Go,’ organised by members of the reading group, in London, December 2015.

The group then expanded to explore other under-known and under-disseminated feminisms from outside the Anglo-American canon. Sessions focused on Arab feminisms, LGBT activism in China, Black US and Latina intersectional feminisms, trans-feminism in Spain, and queer and feminist perspectives, texts and actions including those from Australia, Belgrade, and Iceland.

Continuing its investigation of Italian feminisms, the group deepened its focus on the contemporary relevance of collective practices developed in the 1970s and 1980s including: autocoscienza (consciousness raising), affidamento (entrustment), polyvocality and reciprocal storytelling, and the rejection of mainstream feminist assimilation.

Details of previous programmes can be found on the SPACE website: http://www.spacestudios.org.uk/news/feminist-duration-feb-2018/

As our aspiration is for the group to become more representative of the city’s diversity we particularly welcome people from a broad range of cultural backgrounds to join the Working Group in its collective research on intersectional feminisms and those outside the dominant Anglo-American feminist canon.

The Feminist Duration Reading Group welcomes feminists of all genders and generations to explore the legacy and resonance of art, thinking and collective practice from earlier periods of feminism, in dialogue with contemporary practices and movements.

Image: Ketty La Rocca, Le Mie Parole (My Words), 1973