January 27, 2024: The Feminist Killjoy Handbook by Sara Ahmed

January 27, Saturday (VIRTUAL)
12pm New York  |  5pm London | 6pm Johannesburg

We will read selections from The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way by Sara Ahmed as part of our Transformative Futures series. We aim to create a virtual space for all of us to learn together and tackle new, important ideas. We will gather for one and half hour to discuss this groundbreaking work.

The Feminist Killjoy Handbook is currently released in some regions and will be available more widely from October onwards. Please see here for information on purchasing the book. 

About the Book
Do you refuse to laugh at offensive jokes? Have you ever been accused of ruining dinner by pointing out your companion’s sexist comment? Are you often told to stop being so “woke”? If so, you might be a feminist killjoy—and this handbook is for you. In this book, feminist theorist Sara Ahmed shows how killing joy can be a radical world-making project.

Presenting sharp analysis of literature, film, and influential feminist works, and drawing on her own experiences as a queer feminist scholar-activist of color, Ahmed reveals the invaluable lessons of the feminist killjoy, from the importance of asking questions to the power of the eye roll. The Feminist Killjoy Handbook offers an outstretched hand to feminist killjoys everywhere and an essential intellectual guide to the transformative power of getting in the way.

About the author
Sara Ahmed is a feminist writer and independent scholar who works at the intersection of feminist, queer and race studies. Her research is concerned with how bodies and worlds take shape; and how power is secured and challenged in everyday life worlds as well as institutional cultures. Until the end of 2016, Ahmed was a Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London having been previously based in Women’s Studies at Lancaster University. She resigned from the post at Goldsmiths in protest at the failure to deal with the problem of sexual harassment. Ahmed's primary focus now is on writing and research. She lives on the outskirts of a small village in Cambridgeshire with her partner Sarah Franklin and their beautiful dogs, Poppy and Bluebell.

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