Making Trouble: Life and Politics

by Lynne Segal

Overview

What happens when angry young rebels become wary older women, raging in a leaner, meaner time: a time which exalts only the “new,” when the ruling orthodoxy daily disparages everything associated with the “old”? Delving into her own life and those who left their mark on it, Lynne Segal journeys through time to consider her generation of female dreamers, the experiences that formed them, what they have left to the world, and how they are remembered in a period when pessimism pervades public life. Searching for answers, she studies her family history, sexual awakening, and ethnicity, as well as the peculiarities of the time and place that shaped her political journey, with all its urgency, significance, pleasures and absurdities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786631534
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Series:	Feminist Classics
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Lynne Segal is Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College. Her books include Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism; Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men; and Straight Sex: Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure. She co-wrote Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism with Sheila Rowbotham and Hilary Wainwright.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements     viii
Prologue     1
Living memories     5
Ruptures and renovations     11
Strictly personal     17
In the beginning     18
Buried pasts     21
Household shadows     24
Searching for values     29
My Sydney Sixties     33
Sleeping around     34
Anarchism without ends     37
Sojourning in perverse normality     50
Hearing voices     56
Fragile beginnings     61
Revolutionary household rotas     70
Feminism and motherhood     83
Escape into action     91
Life as politics     92
Ideas in the void?     101
Women's cultural renaissance     108
Contesting injuries     120
Twists of time     131
Political timelines     138
Battling for words     139
The rise and fall of socialist man     145
Living with difference     151
Women's disputed legacies     158
Phallic mother     164
Temporal belongings     172
When sexual warriors grow old     175
Cultures of ageing     177
Hazards of autonomy     181
The bonds of loss     185
The brakes on love     194
Age comes of age     202
As a rootless cosmopolitan: Jewish questions     212
Who's a Jew?     212
History lessons     215
Faultlines of memory     219
The hidden powers of injury     228
Critical connections     238
Dissident affiliations     247
Ways of belonging     253
Generational transmission     256
Fragile endings     264
Notes and references     269
Index     306

Editorial Reviews

A moving defence of the pleasures and pains of human solidarity.”
—Melissa Benn, Guardian

“A fascinating record of the changing face of socialism and feminism, observed with poignancy and acuity … a woman of worth.”
—Independent

“Funny, poignant, courageous and combative, Making Trouble teems with insights on the culture and politics of the last four decades … A book for young rebels of all ages.”
—Sheila Rowbotham

“An engrossing tale … an account of the rich contribution that second-wave feminism has made to modern Britain.”
—Times Higher Education

“Required reading … Given today’s political climate, Segal’s writing is as relevant as ever.”
—V Magazine

From the Publisher