Speaker: Johanna Hedva
Sunday 12. November, 14:15 – 15:30
In 2015, Johanna Hedva gave the lecture “My Body Is a Prison of Pain So I Want to Leave It Like a Mystic But I Also Love It and Want it to Matter Politically”. The essay inspired by that talk, “Sick Woman Theory” (2016), is a document of emergency, a manifesto of desperation and resilience. Where it proposed sickness as a form of resistance against oppressions of many kinds, Hedva’s next essay “In Defense of De-Persons” (2016) interrogates how neoliberal signifiers of health and productivity have become instituted as properties an individual can “own” – or not. From here, Hedva’s research has shifted toward asking “how can we heal?” with emphasis on the illusory and fractured “we”. Her forthcoming essay “Letter to a Young Doctor” proposes that healing and justice might be the same.
Bio – Johanna Hedva
Johanna Hedva is a fourth-generation Los Angelena on her mother’s side and, on her father’s side, the granddaughter of a woman who escaped from North Korea. She is disabled, queer, gender non-binary, and a witch. Hedva is the author of the novel “On Hell”, forthcoming from Sator Press in 2018. From 2012 to 2015, her series of queered Ancient Greek plays, “The Greek Cycle”, was performed in Los Angeles, in venues like a Honda Odyssey being driven down the freeway. She has published several books in handmade limited editions, and her writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Mask Magazine, 3:AM and others. Her ongoing project “This Earth, Our Hospital” includes the essays “Sick Woman Theory” and “In Defence of De-persons”. She’s the frontperson of the noise-punk band Important Part.