22: Realism and Other Romances feat. Grace Lavery

Abby and Patrick welcome writer and academic Grace Lavery to discuss her new book Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques. They discuss Grace’s relationship to psychoanalysis; her uses of Freud and Freudianism for both theoretical and pragmatic political purposes and in service of bodily freedom; her interpretation of Freudian concepts like penis envy and the castration complex; her writing in both Pleasure and Efficacy and her memoir Please Miss on changing sexes as an empirical fact; the stakes of calling things “real” or “authentic” versus dismissing them as fake, try-hard, or otherwise affected; the tensions between queer theory and transgender studies and her notion of “egg theory”; sex, pleasure, desire, and shame; her eminently useful idea of “romances of intractability”; Eve Sedgwick’s, Judith Butler’s, and Lauren Berlant’s later-in-life turns towards transmasculinity; and Grace’s work as activist and advocate in both US and UK contexts.<br/><br/>Grace’s book Pleasure and Efficacy is here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691243924/pleasure-and-efficacy<br/><br/>Her memoir, Please Miss, is here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/grace-lavery/please-miss/9781541620643/?lens=seal-press<br/><br/>The recent piece of hers we refer to in the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), “Gender Criticism Versus Gender Abolition: On Three Recent Books” is here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/gender-criticism-versus-gender-abolition-on-three-recent-books-about-gender/<br/><br/>Other texts referenced in the episode include:<br/><br/>Leo Bersani, Thoughts and Things<br/>Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, Intimacies<br/>Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “White Glasses”<br/>Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Shame, Theatricality, and Queer Performativity: Henry James’s The Art of the Novel”<br/>Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay”<br/>Susan Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage” <br/>Susan Stryker, “Transgender Studies: Queer Theory’s Evil Twin”<br/>Sigmund Freud, “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing Pad’”<br/>Freud, “On Humor”<br/>Freud, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable”<br/>Jacques Derrida, “Freud and the Scene of Writing”<br/>D. A. Miller, Place for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical<br/>Joan Copjec, Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists<br/>Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (Seminar VII)<br/>LaPlanche and Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis<br/>Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives<br/><br/>Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107<br/> <br/> A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:<br/> <br/>Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness<br/> Twitter: @UnhappinessPod<br/> Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness<br/> Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness<br/> <br/> Theme song:<br/> Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1<br/> https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO<br/> Provided by Fruits Music