Episode 27 - A Conversation with Simon(e) van Saarloos: Disintegrating Linear Timelines -- NY Art Bookfair

CW: This discussion mentions childhood sexual abuse

When Simon(e) van Saarloos invited me to be in conversation with them at the New York Artbook Fair surrounding their recently published Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto (MACK Books), I was honored and excited. We had already been discussing recording a conversation for the Breakup Theory, so it was serendipitous that this event came along. I love doing the podcast, but it's really exciting for me to do public talks and get to engage directly with people. Simon and I met before the event and we found that we were able to really push each other's thinking into interesting and exciting places, so we anticipated a good conversation. It also turned out that we are both working on books about despair—theirs is the upcoming Trans Despair through AK Press. Mine will be out late next year . . . shhhh, it's a secret.

If you haven't yet had a chance to read Against Ageism, I'll give a brief set up. Simon writes in a hybrid personal, theoretical, and sometimes academic style (i.e. citations of academic work). This style really invites you in to their deep consideration of embodied existence, age, sex, and gender. The book is very provocative in many ways, which I'll allow you to hear about in our conversation. It turns out age is a very rich entry point into thinking about a whole tangle of things we take for granted about how we live. Of particular interest for me was the approach to different ways of thinking about time, crip time, linear time, racialized time, queer time all opposed to the cishetero narratives of growing up.

I have typically taken an approach to thinking about age from a perspective of youth and youth liberation, specifically addressing the situation of trans kids. In this book, Simon focuses a bit more on the so-called older ages, perception, and relationship—and also death and grief. All of these issues Simon intimately connects to sexuality and desire and the experience of transness and queerness they have had (and that other people might share and understand).

This episode comes directly from a recorded conversation at MoMA PS 1 in Queens, NY, so the format is different than normal episodes. I am grateful for MoMA PS 1 and Printed Matter (who hosted the bookfair) making this recording and sharing it with me.

Simon and I found this conversation so generative that we are planning another—so if you like this one, look forward to another on a different timeline.

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The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which pulls together a wide variety of shows taking an anarchist perspective on culture, politics, actions, and more. Check them out at https://channelzeronetwork.com.