Fiction Series: On Humiliation, Power, and the Subject

Hi everyone!

Please join us on June 18th to discuss Wayne Koestenbaum’s Humiliation in conjunction with excerpts from Judith Butler’s seminal work on subjection/subjectivity, The Psychic Life of Power.

We’ll be discussing some of the following questions:

• Can humiliation be self-defining? Or self-effacing?
• Is humiliation similar in nature to Butler’s discussion of subjection and the formation of the subject?
• Is humiliation a creative force, just as much as it might be a destructive one?

Humiliation will be a slight deviation from our usual Fiction Series pieces, as it is part memoir, part observation, and (ha) mostly non-fiction. Koestenbaum wonderfully explores the limits of humiliation in a variety of contexts, whether that be social, political, personal, or otherwise, in a succession of engaging and provocative vignettes.

For this meeting, we will be reading the following:

• Humiliation by Wayne Koestenbaum, Fugues #1-4 (pages 1-67 in the Picador edition)
• Preface to The Psychic Life of Power by Judith Butler, pages 1-30 (I have attached here the entire book, but only the preface is required for the first meet up)

Unfortunately, there is not a publicly available copy of Humiliation, so if anyone would really like to read this with us and is having trouble with access, please let me know. Both the Picador and Notting Hill editions are popular.

Additionally, Humiliation deals with some hefty topics–if there is something that anyone does not feel comfortable talking about in a broader forum, please let me know privately ahead of time and I will ensure we steer clear of that.

We’ll be meeting at 7pm on June 18th at Talea in Williamsburg. If you have any other questions or difficulty finding us, feel free to message me.

See you there!