Anarchist writer, musician, and podcaster Margaret Killjoy returns to the podcast to discuss the political act of writing fiction and imagining the “ambiguous utopia.” I ask Margaret to define what hope is or can be, and how her work communicating the stories of radical individuals and movements during pivotal moments throughout history on her podcast, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, can help us (re-)frame contemporary struggles for liberation, justice, and peace in the world today.
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#305 | Storytelling Is An Emergency: In Our Bones, We Knew This Was Going To Happen w/ Sophie Strand
Writer, poet, and essayist Sophie Strand joins me to discuss the "emergency of storytelling" in our climate disrupted present and future, and the subjects she explores in her upcoming book releases, The Madonna Secret, and The Flowering Wand: Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Transpecies Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists Heal the Masculine.
Sophie and I entered this conversation a bit fuzzy, a little stunned. We acknowledge this from the get go. We were processing devastating news that morning: Hurricane Ida crashed and dragged itself from south to north across the East Coast, overwhelming the infrastructure, shutting down the grid and flooding cities. We discuss how climatologically, ecologically, we can feel how things have shifted tremendously — in the Northwest where I live, and in Hudson Valley where Sophie lives. While, personally, I tend to explore this broad subject on this podcast, Sophie writes about it.
#301 | Girlhood: Empty Consent & Defining Granular Harm w/ Melissa Febos
Intro: 6:52
Critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos joins me to discuss her most recent collection of essays, Girlhood — "a gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls and the adults they become."
I first became aware of Melissa and her book Girlhood from an essay she published in The New York Times Magazine titled I Spent My Life Consenting to Touch I Didn’t Want, adapted from an essay published in the then-to-be-released Girlhood. Her personal reflections on the concept of "empty consent" from her experiences attending a cuddle party (pre-pandemic), compelled me to contact her to discuss the complex issues she deftly navigates through that essay. After reading Girlhood, I recognized the significance of her masterful writing and exploration of her own childhood and development into womanhood. We discuss, within the 47-minute interview, a few of the significant insights I drew out of my reading, including the gradients of consent and trauma, and the role men can, and must, play in upending patriarchy in our time.
Melissa Febos is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017), which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, an Indie Next Pick, and was widely named a Best Book of 2017. Her second essay collection, Girlhood, a National Bestseller, was published by Bloomsbury on March 30. A craft book, ‘Body Work,’ will be published by Catapult in March 2022.
Episode Notes:
- Learn more about Melissa and her work: https://www.melissafebos.com
- Purchase Girlhood through Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/24168/9781635572520
- Read I Spent My Life Consenting to Touch I Didn’t Want: https://nyti.ms/38gozlV
- Music was produced by Epik The Dawn.
Video Segment:
#265 | Art & The Void: Majoritarian Reality & The Infinite Sea Of Possibility w/ Margaret Killjoy
Intro: 11:36
In this episode I speak with Margaret Killjoy — anarchist author, musician, and crafter.
In the wake of the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests and uprisings since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, "anarchists" have been in the news. Whether it’s President Trump calling for the arrest of "radical-left anarchists" and "Antifa," or Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden stating that “arsonists and anarchists should be prosecuted,” there is a long history of anarchists being scapegoated by the political elite in times of civil unrest. I ask Margaret to provide some historical context to these statements by Trump and Biden, pointing to the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Haymarket Affair of 1886 in the United States, and the role anarchists played in each of these respective events.
From there, we move into discussing a recent essay published on her website ‘Art and the Void,’ in which she explores creativity and artistic exploration, using the metaphor of an "ice floe, floating in an infinite sea" to examine our mutually expressed and shared reality and our contributions to it.
We, more or less all of us, live on the ice floe. We, more or less all of us, are constantly in the process of making and fixing and expanding it. Without our continued work, the ice would break apart, or it would melt, and we would be swallowed by the sea, by the void, by the infinite possibility. That is to say, we are constantly in the process of making and remaking reality. We do not do this alone. We do this collectively. (https://bit.ly/2Yg1xXO)
Within this framing, we then discuss not only creative expression as such, but also gender roles and other potentially constricting categories our society imposes on us. We also discuss her focus on writing mostly fiction versus nonfiction, and how both forms of writing can help us explore the sea the infinite possibility.
Margaret Killjoy is the author of numerous novels, including ‘The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion’ and ‘The Barrow Will Send What it May,’ and has contributed to such books as ‘We Are Many.’ She is currently a part several music projects, including Vulgarite, Feminazgul, Alsarath, and Nomadic War Machine. As she states in her bio:
I’ve spent most of my adult life on the road, but am currently nestled into the Appalachian mountains. Politically, I’m an anarchist: I believe society would be better off without systems of hierarchy and oppression such as the state, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and the like. I’m a trans woman and my preferred pronouns are she/her, but I also believe in the abolition of gendered language and have no problem with people using the singular “they” to refer to me.
Episode Notes:
- Learn more about Margaret and her work: http://birdsbeforethestorm.net
- Read her essay ‘Art and the Void’: https://bit.ly/2Yg1xXO
- Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/magpiekilljoy
- Check out her various music projects: https://vulgarite.bandcamp.com / https://feminazgul.bandcamp.com / https://alsarath.bandcamp.com / https://nomadicwarmachine.bandcamp.com
- The songs featured in this episode are “Witch of Hemlock, Witch of Pine” by Alsarath from the album Come To Daggers and “I Know You're Wrong For Me” by Nomadic War Machine from the album We Are Not Monsters.
#185 | The Gods Have Fled: The Home As A Site Of Defiance Against Modernity w/ Ramon Elani
Intro: 13:30
In this episode, I speak with heathen writer and poet Ramon Elani — frequent contributor at Gods & Radicals. In exploring his unique prospective on how to address the converging social, spiritual, and ecological crises on this planet, we examine three essays published for Gods & Radicals, which include ‘Land, Home, and the Gods,’ ‘World’s End,’ and ‘Our Rage Against The Modern World’ — the last of which was co-written with Gods & Radicals co-founder Rhyd Wildermuth.
“Let the home and the idea of the home become a pillar of strength. Let the home become a site of defiance, a bold denial of industrial society. Let the home be made into a bulwark against the modern world.” (http://bit.ly/LandHomeGods) Often, when I try to get at the vast moral dilemma we are forced to address in the face of the global climate crisis, the extinction of human and non-human life, and the hollowing of community and connection to the land implicit in the “progress” narrative of industrial civilization — the notion of addressing these converging crises on a collective level seemed apparent and obvious. While that may be true, another truth emerges from the prose of Ramon. In this interview, I ask Ramon to expound on the themes he’s presented in three essays on the subject of modernity, and that to “reestablish humanity’s relationship with the gods is also to reconnect with the land, for the land is the gods. The present crisis, which devastates humanity and the biosphere, is defined in both material and spiritual terms.” (http://bit.ly/ElaniWorldsEnd) Ramon’s prose is intoxicating, blunt, poetic, beautiful, heartbreaking, and clarifying. Ramon doesn’t shy away from obvious truths implicit in modernity and the reality it has forged in its attempt to subject the Earth and its living systems to the logic of “progress” and endless growth. In Ramon’s work, the home and our relationship with the land becomes the center of our resistance to the life destroying forces that are despoiling the planet. Modernity is reckoned with in these terms, as Ramon has thoroughly and lucidly explored in his writing, which I have delightfully read and incorporated into my own worldview. “For hundreds of years, humanity has expanded its domain over the earth, at the enormous cost of non human life and human spiritual and physical well being. Every moment that this world continues to exist means suffering and extinction for non human life and soulless misery for humanity. We cannot stop what’s coming and it best that we do not try, for only in the death of this world is there hope for a new future to bloom.”
Ramon Elani is an acausal, anti-modern, heathen poet and author. He holds a PhD in literature and philosophy. He lives with his family among mountains and rivers in Western New England. He follows the way of wyrd.
Episode Notes:
- The essays featured in this episode are ‘Land, Home, and the Gods’ (http://bit.ly/LandHomeGods), ‘World’s End’ (http://bit.ly/ElaniWorldsEnd), and ‘Our Rage Against The Modern World’ co-written with Rhyd Wildermuth (http://bit.ly/RageAgainstModern), published at Gods and Radicals: http://bit.ly/GRelani
- Ramon’s other work can be found at: https://thetigersleap.wordpress.com
- Support Ramon on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/runewhisper
- The songs featured in this episode is “Uk,” “Shell of Light,” and “Ghost Hardware” by Burial from the album Untrue.
- The title card features “On a way to the Feast in the Trollcastle (1904)” by Theodor Kittelsen