Xenofeminism: Helen Hester in conversation with Joanna Walsh

*Please note that this event will take place on 29th March, not the 22nd as previously advertised.*

Join us as we welcome Helen Hester to talk about her new book, Xenofeminism, with Joanna Walsh.

In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?

These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the Laboria Cuboniks collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto 'Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation'. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.

Challenging and iconoclastic, this visionary book is the essential guide to one of the most exciting intellectual trends in contemporary feminism.

Helen Hester is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the University of West London, and co-founder of the Laboria Cuboniks collective. She is also the author of Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex, and editor of the collections, Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism, and Dea Ex Machina.

Joanna Walsh is a writer, journalist, and campaigner whose work has appeared in Granta Magazine, gorse journal, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Stinging Fly, and many others. Her new book, Break.up, is due to be published by Semiotext(e) in April 2018, and her previous books include Worlds from the Word's End, Vertigo, and Hotel.