The Hopeful Reader

In today’s episode the hopeful readers are on tour - well, at our local park - such that the two of us have become multiple in connection with nature (there’s some birdsong in the background lol). Whilst neoliberal capitalism has co-opted mindfulness in lieu of systemic change, we explore how the work of queer theorists and ecofeminists might enable us to re-orientate our approach to mindfulness,...

Is fandom culture a way to politically and ethically refuse normative attachments - a way to opt out of the mainstream? In this episode we neuroqueer the idea of ‘obsession’ and discuss what ‘parasocial’ relationships even are at a time in which algorithms are always already dis/organising social life. Inspired by the Japanese novel Idol, Burning by Rin Usami and a recent Black Mirror episode...

We are so back: szn 2, let's go! If you've been wondering what we've been up to, and what we've got planned for this season - this episode reveals all! We also talk about how the philosophical tradition of speculative pragmatism guides our hopeful thinking and reading. :) Subscribe to our Patreon for exclusive unfiltered book-club style episodes about our current reads and thoughts... patreon.com/...

In a society that ascribes inherent value to productivity, it’s easy to overlook the potentially harmful structures we are actually (re)producing through our labour. In this episode we explore the cult of productivity - life under capitalism - through a neuroqueer lens. We question how the individualistic nature of self-discipline that surrounds productivity interacts with acts of solidarity and m...

Subscribe to our Patreon for exclusive unfiltered book-club style episodes about our current reads and thoughts... patreon.com/TheHopefulReader Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leaning into our film bro personas, in this episode we use the latest Joker movie to explore how dissociation - the cultivation of numbness, or splitting of subjectivity - might be considered a subtle form of resistance whilst inhabiting hostile environments. Is our refusal to be affected by oppressive structures a revolutionary act of self-preservation? Or does cultivated numbness prevent us from...

In the age of the algorithm, social media platforms and machine learning technologies are now defining, and perpetually updating, aesthetic ideals and beauty standards. In this episode, we discuss how beauty culture is entangled with the digital technologies that have become so pervasive in everyday life. How does ‘algorithmic oppression’ play into the creation and maintenance of beauty standards,...

Happy Halloween, hopeful readers! In this episode, we bring all the spooky vibes with a little monster mash up…From Frankenstein and witches to a jellyfish communist revolution, we explore what the figure of the ‘monster’ tells us about the exclusionary, anthropocentric category of the human, as well as how the affective circulation of fear works to maintain hierarchical boundaries and binaries. C...

Can writing - the fixing and rendering static of our experiences - ever be queer? I mean, sure...but why is (queer) writer’s block still so all consuming?  In this episode we dip our toes into queer theory’s subjectivity debate before discussing how we might expand the ‘I’ in personal narrative in ways that problematise normative modes of writing about our ‘own’ experiences. Inspired by femin...

The Hopeful Reader returns after a little summer hiatus! In this episode, we reflect on the place of ‘hope’ in the current socio-political epoch; drawing upon John Holloway’s ‘Hope in Hopeless Times’, we explore how relational forms of rage-hope might mobilise queer revolutionary politics…Why do we call ourselves ‘hopeful’ readers in supposedly ‘hopeless times’? If that all sounds like a lot, you...

Episode 6 : Affect and the city  In this episode we explore how space can be queered through fiction; through continuously recreating the affective dimensions of queer space, can fiction problematise the attempted containment, erasure or supposedly ‘temporary’ nature of queerness in public spaces? Inspired by works such as Call Me by Your Name, Young Mungo and Nevada, this episode considers t...

Cyborg promises  The possible pathways of the present digitally mediated moment are now shaped by the algorithms that govern our everyday lives - algorithms that are often imbued with oppressive technocapitalist values. If we are to broaden the potentiality of the present in radically transformative ways, do we need to relinquish digital tech entirely? Maybe…and yet, this is seemingly impossi...

This episode is inspired by the novel, Almond by Won-Pyung Sohn (2020) - the protagonist’s experience of alexithymia enables us to see the world at a slant, disrupting normative affective genres in ways that open up the possibility of new forms of relationality…but at what cost? Using this book as a guide, we delve into Lauren Berlant’s idea of ‘cruel optimism’ to explore how hoping...

Past lives, perfect days? We heard you like film bros... Sometimes, we might feel unbearably caught between the regret of a seemingly lost past and the future we (think we should) strive for - in this episode we reframe this space as 'the elliptical present', a place of possibility, somewhere to playfully experiment with alternative ways of life. "Now is now, next time is next time" - inspired by...

Waluigi boards, Virginia's Wolf and fields of corn...The erasure of queer lives in dominant written history works to streamline the potentiality of the present moment, in turn, straightening the possible futures we might imagine. And so, in queering linear temporality, we explore how works of fiction can enable queer ghosts - those erased histories - to broaden the imaginative possibilities of the...

Welcome to The Hopeful Reader Podcast! In this introductory episode Eve and Finola discuss how works of fiction can act as a source of creative moral and political vision - a portal to another world. The Hopeful Reader views fiction as a way to create and inhabit alternative world imaginaries from within the confines of normativity. This episode delves into the importance of imagination as well as...