Session 3: Utopian Family: Alternatives to the traditional family model
This is a queer reading group engaging with social theory and science fiction. It is purposefully set up to work against the anti-utopian logic of our times rooted in capitalist realism, the system of ideas that make it “easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism”. Arguably many of our contemporary crises can be tied to an absence of collective imagination, which is why it is important to encourage thinking about radically different – hopeful – futures.
Recommended readings
Science Fiction
Naomi Mitchison - Solution Three
Theory
Lewis, Sophie. Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation. Verso Books, 2022.
Chapter 1: But I Love My Family!; Chapter 4: Comrades Against Kinship
Helen Hester Promethean Labors and Domestic Realism
https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/artificial-labor/140680/promethean-labors-and-domestic-realism/
Charles Fourier's Queer Theory
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/1896-charles-fourier-s-queer-theory
Additional /optional readings
Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family | Sophie Lewis in conversation with Verso Books
cw: discussions of sexual violence and abortion
Heston, Laura. Utopian Kinship?: The possibilities of Queer Parenting (p. 245-267) in Jones, Angela, eds. A critical inquiry into queer utopias. Springer, 2013.
Ward, Jane. Radical Experiments Involving Innocent Children: Locating Parenthood in Queer Utopia (p. 231-244) in Jones, Angela, eds. A critical inquiry into queer utopias. Springer, 2013.
Law, Victoria. What Would a Feminist Utopia Look Like for Parents of Colour? (p. 107-114) in Brodsky, Alexandra, and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, eds. The feminist utopia project: Fifty-seven visions of a wildly better future. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2015.
Your Sex Is Not Radical by Yasmin Nair
Preciado, Paul. Pornotopia: An essay on Playboy’s architecture and biopolitics. Princeton University Press, 2014.
Sargent, Lyman Tower, and Lucy Sargisson. "Sex in utopia: Eutopian and dystopian sexual relations." Utopian Studies 25, no. 2 (2014): 299-320.