"The Politics of Pleasure": Kate Soper in conversation with Lynne Segal

A special event co-hosted with Boston Review!

As an environmental and denuclearization activist, Kate Soper noticed a worrisome pattern: efforts to green the economy often sound like calls for making do with less and giving up modern pleasures. To Soper, this gets it exactly wrong. Discussing her forum essay in Boston Review’s summer 2022 issue with Lynne Segal, Soper argues for an “alternative hedonism” that sees “post-growth living” as an opportunity for greater pleasure, not less.

Modern life is immiserating, sickening, isolating, and exhausting, Soper contends, creating desires that consumption can never fulfil. Designing simpler ways of living – built around local community and abundant free time – could make us happier and healthier while giving our over-extended planet a new lease on life.

You can purchase a copy of Boston Review’s summer 2022 issue on "The Politics of Pleasure: Debating the Good Life" here: https://store.bostonreview.net/backis...

Kate Soper is Emerita Professor of Philosophy at London Metropolitan University. She has been an editorial collective member of Radical Philosophy and New Left Review and a regular columnist for Capitalism Nature Socialism. Her most recent book is Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism (Verso, 2020).

Lynne Segal is Emerita Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her most recent book is the co-authored The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence (Verso, 2020). She is also author of numerous other books, including Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy (2017); Out of Time: The Pleasures and the Perils of Ageing (Verso, 2013); and Straight Sex: Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure (Verso, 2014).
Twitter:   / lynne_segal