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Lauren Elkin
Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage). Her previous book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City (Chatto/FSG) was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Her essays have appeared in Granta, the London Review of Books, Harper’s, the New York Times, and Frieze, among others. Her next book, Art Monsters, will be out in July 2023 (Chatto/FSG). She lives in London.

Articles Available Online


Maria Gainza’s ‘Optic Nerve’

Book Review

May 2019

Lauren Elkin

Book Review

May 2019

In his foreword to A Thousand Plateaus, on the pleasures of philosophy, and of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy in particular, Brian Massumi writes:  ...

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Issue No. 8

Barking From the Margins: On écriture féminine

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 8

 I. Two moments in May May 2, 2011. The novelists Siri Hustvedt and Céline Curiol are giving a talk...

In the face of legal restraints, police repression, political violence and the pressures and insecurity precipitated by the pandemic, the feminist movement in Turkey has persisted in mobilising in the streets across the country Across several nights of the year thousands of bodies join in motion on the streets of major cities in defiance of police barricades to engage in stubborn collective joy The most recent Feminist Night March in Istanbul, which took place this year on International Woman’s Day on 8 March 2022, set itself against patriarchy, heterosexism, male violence, labour exploitation, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia and war The capillary of backstreets of Beyoğlu district sang with the movement of bodies, an accumulation of hope, hurt and protest articulated in the rhythm of shouted and painted slogans –‘Tie your hair Rapunzel, let the asshole use the stairs’; ‘There is shit in the fridge and a riot on the streets’; ‘Our labour, our body, our identity are ours’; ‘If you feel despairing, remember this crowd’ In the words of Saidiya Hartman, from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019), ‘If you listen closely, you can hear the whole world in a bent note, a throwaway lyric, a singular thread of the collective utterance’   The feminist movement in Turkey connects itself to a long tradition of riotous chorus, whose shouts against violence and despair continue to echo through different passageways into the present day The Greek etymology of the word ‘chorus’ refers to a ‘dance within an enclosure’, a dance which is transmitted through different mediums – in the history of the street, in the pages of a book and the sharp lines drawn by the visions of women who came before Among this chorus, the voices of a generation of women writers from Turkey working in the 1970s and 80s, considered cult writers today, are still active participants in the feminist imagination These writers are distinct for their examination of the lives of women within the contours of their social and economic conditions – not tracing these contours, but testing their limits through foregrounding the inner lives and concerns of their subjects The

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK...

The End of Francophonie: The Politics of French Literature

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Issue No. 2

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 2

I. We were a couple of minutes late for the panel we’d hoped to attend. The doors were closed and there was a surly-looking...

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poetry

December 2011

Return After Earthquake

Jeffrey Angles

poetry

December 2011

although left for months my house is still standing here on terra firma branches broken by snow fallen into...

Art

December 2011

James Richards: Not Blacking Out...

Chris Newlove Horton

Art

December 2011

Artist James Richards appropriates audio-visual material gathered from a range of sources, which he then edits into elaborate, fragmented...

poetry

June 2011

Testament: Two Poems

Connie Voisine

poetry

June 2011

Testament What’s the difference? You might wear it out touching, touching, not buying. Like a snail on a stick,...

 

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