Love, Gender and Agonistic Politics
This project looks into epistolary narratives of women political theorists and activists, following traces of Hannah Arendt’s philosophical approaches to love and agonistic politics. It further makes connections with feminist ruminations around love as an existential force in the ephemeral constitution of the self in modernity. Arendt's interlocutors include the romantic socialist Désirée Véret-Gay, the Marxist Rosa Luxemburg, and the anarchists Emma Goldman and Rose Pesotta.
Archival Research
The project involves research in the following Archives:
The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Manuscripts and Archives Division. Rose Pesotta papers
The University of California Berkeley, Emma Goldman’s papers. The papers are available on line through the internet archive
The Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, The Hannah Arendt Papers (LC/HAP)
Archives Nationales de France /Fonds Fourier et Considerant/10 AS 42/T-Z/Dossier 8/Lettres de Désirée Véret, veuve Gay.
Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF), Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal/Fonds Enfantin ou Fonds Saint-Simonien
Publications
Epistolary Narratives of Love, Gender and Agonistic Politics: an Arendtian Approach.
London: Routledge, 2023
Articles
Rethinking the subject in feminist research: narrative personae and stories of 'the real', Textual Practice, 32(6), 939-955, doi: 10.1080/0950236X.2018.1486541, 2018.
Amor mundi: Romantic socialisms and feminist politics, British Sociological Association: Auto/Biography Yearbook, Vol. XI, 63-76, 2018.
Action as narration/narration as action: reading Maud Gonne’s auto/biographical writings as marginalized knowledges of the historiographical operation. Irish Educational Studies, DOI: 10.1080/03323315.2018.1465834, 2018.
Imagining and Living the Revolution: an Arendtian reading of Rosa Luxemburg's letters and writings', in Feminist Review, 2014.
Love, Narratives, Politics: Encounters between Hannah Arendt and Rosa Luxemburg’ in Theory, Culture and Society, 2013.
Good night and good-bye: temporal and spatial rhythms in piecing together Emma Goldman’s auto/biographical fragments. British Sociological Association Auto/Biography Yearbook, 2013.
Book chapters
‘The Gendered Politics of Love: An Arendtian Reading’. In Hannah Arendt and the History of Thought, edited by Marguerite La Caze and Daniel Brennan, Lexington Books, 77-93, 2022.
Epistolary entanglements of Love and Politics, Reading Rosa Luxemberg's letters, The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History, 381-391, edited by Ivor Goodson, with Ari Antikainen, Molly Andrews and Pat Sikes. London: Routledge, 2016.
Invited talks and keynote lectures
Epistolary narratives of love, gender and agonistic politics. Keynote lecture for the Femmes Auteurs Anglo-Americaines (FAAM) conference Intimate Politics in Anglophone Women's Writing, University of Paris Nanterre, September 23-24, 2022.
Politicogenetic phenomena: Hannah Arendt, Rosa Luxemburg and their feminist interlocutors. Keynote talk for the inaugural conference of Arendt in Aberdeen 2022-2024 series: Council Democracy as an alternative to Representative Democracy. University of Aberdeen, June 24, 2022.
Yours, Roza: Gender Politics and Amor Mundi’. Centre for Gender Studies, Linnaeus University, Sweden, November 13, 2018.
'On the Aesthetics of Action: the artpolitics assemblage' Symposium on 'Disobedience and Complex Systems', Iklektic Arts Lab, University of the Arts, London, September 29, 2017.
'Who are you? Narrative traces of uniqueness and plurality’ opening talk for a research workshop on Arendt at the Centre for the study of Storytelling, Experientiality and Memory (SELMA), University of Turku, Finland, October 17, 2017.
Ordinary/Extraordinary: Narratives, Politics, History. Invited presentation at The Political Aesthetics of Power and Protest, one day workshop, at the University of Warwick, Department of Politics and International Studies, September 25, 2012. (you can listen to the paper here)
Love, Narratives, Politics: an Arendtian reading of Rosa Luxemburg's letters. Panel on Political Narratives, Narrative Matters Conference on Life and Narrative. American University of Paris, May 29-June 1, 2012.