“I am not willing to make happiness my cause “–Sara Ahmed
“I refuse to be polite or civil with anyone who does not recognise my full humanity” –Mona Eltahawy
Please join us for a conversation between Sara Ahmed and Mona Eltahawy about impolite, uncivil and killjoy feminisms and why they are key to the disruption of hetero-patriarchy, colonialism and racial capitalism.
The conversation is to mark the launch of The Feminist Killjoy Handbook, written as a “helping hand” for feminist killjoys everywhere, and published by Seal Press on October 3rd , 2023. In the handbook, Sara includes Mona’s The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls as one of her recommended texts for feminist killjoys.
Sara Ahmed is an independent queer feminist scholar of colour. She is an unprofessional feminist and a professional feminist killjoy and her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. She has just published her first trade book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook with Seal Press. Previous books (published by Duke University Press) include Complaint! (2021), What’s The Use? On the Uses of Use (2019), Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Queer Phenomenology: Objects, Orientations, Others (2006). She is currently writing A Complainer’s Handbook: A Guide to Building Less Hostile Institutions and has begun a new project on common sense. She blogs at feministkilljoy.com.
Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator, and disruptor of patriarchy. She is founder and editor-in-chief of the newsletter FEMINIST GIANT. Her opinion essays have appeared in media across the world. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2005) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls (2019) took that disruption worldwide. She is a contributor to the recent anthology This Arab is Queer and is editing the anthology Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrums. Her new book due 2024 is a memoir of menopause called The King Herself: How Hatshepsut Helped Me Unbecome.
