Socialist Feminist Book Club: Abolish the Family, by Sophie Lewis

Join the Sheffield Socialist Feminist Book Club, hosted by Workers' Liberty, to discuss Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation by Sophie Lewis.

F or a PDF of the text contact Kelly: [email protected]

FROM THE BLURB: What if family were not the only place you might hope to feel safe, loved, cared for and accepted? What if we could do better than the family?
We need to talk about the family. For those who are lucky, families can be filled with love and care, but for many they are sites of pain: from abandonment and neglect, to abuse and violence. Nobody is more likely to harm you than your family.
Even in so-called happy families, the unpaid, unacknowledged work that it takes to raise children and care for each other is endless and exhausting. It could be otherwise: in this urgent, incisive polemic, leading feminist critic Sophie Lewis makes the case for family abolition.
Abolish the Family traces the history of family abolitionist demands, beginning with nineteenth century utopian socialist and sex radical Charles Fourier, the Communist Manifesto and early-twentieth century Russian family abolitionist Alexandra Kollontai. Turning her attention to the 1960s, Lewis reminds us of the anti-family politics of radical feminists like Shulamith Firestone and the gay liberationists, a tradition she traces to the queer marxists bringing family abolition to the twenty-first century. This exhilarating essay looks at historic rightwing panic about Black families and the violent imposition of the family on indigenous communities, and insists: only by thinking beyond the family can we begin to imagine what might come after.
– Donna Haraway

WOMEN'S FIGHTBACK: We have an Instagram account! We'll be sharing articles from our socialist feminist magazine Women's Fightback and weekly newspaper Solidarity, as well as info about protests and other political activity

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Read the latest edition of Women's Fightback online: https://www.workersliberty.org/feminism

Event Venue

Showroom Café Bar, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield City Centre, United Kingdom