During the Summer Session 2020, study circle 3 started two reading groups. One of the groups had their last meeting this week… although it is not really their last meeting. But: the book they have been reading is finished.

Eight participants together read ‘Revolutionary Time: On Time and Difference in Kristeva and Irigaray’ by Fanny Söderbäck over the last couple of months. Diving into the question of change. The first and the last meeting was together with the author of the book, who was very generous in her explanations, helping us to make sense of the manifold topics that come up in the book. We particularly talked a lot about Kristeva’s understanding of chora, about Irigaray’s reading of Plato, and about how to enact ‘revolutionary time’ in our own lives: as readers, as writers, as researchers, as women, as feminists.

Fanny Söderbäck shows in her book that there are mostly two different ways in which time is thought and judged. Not just time, but concepts of change, what it means to be human, what is good – all are linked in these two modes of time: linear time versus cyclical time. Söderbäck offers a third mode, revolutionary time. ‘Revolution’ not in the sense of breaking from what was before and doing something completely new – which would be a naïve understanding of time, a linear understanding, which is not about change but rather about repeating the same over and over. No, revolution in the sense of the waves of the sea, of re-volute, of the movement of return that is not repetition. A concept that brings up a lot of questions and concerns, and it has been very rewarding to think and talk about this in detail for several months. (See also this interview with the author on the ‘New Books Network’.)

The group is aiming to start a writing project based on our experience, which we will inform you about later.

Also, after the coming Winter Symposium of Study Circle 3, we will continue with a new book in feminist philosophy. In case you’re interested in joining, please write to: hospitality.solidarity@gmail.com — no previous knowledge of feminist philosophy is required. We meet for two hours, once every two weeks on Zoom.