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Carolin Emcke: How We Desire

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‘There is as much difference between us and ourselves,’ writes Carolin Emcke ‘as between us and others’.

Carolin Emcke is a celebrated philosopher and journalist from Germany, whose remarkable career has included stints reporting from conflict zones for Der Spiegel and lecturing in political theory at Yale.

How We Desire is the first of Emcke’s books to be translated into English. Part memoir, part philosophical treatise, the book seeks to examine the nature of desire and difference, shaking off fate-fixing norms and rigid identities and working towards a more radical and flexible idea of human sexuality. ‘What if, instead of discovering our sexuality only once, during puberty,’ she asks, ‘we discover it again later – and then again, after that?’

What, and who, do we want? What does it mean? How does it change? We’ll ask this formidable thinker in March.

Carolin Emcke’s visit is supported by Goethe Institut Australia.

Hares & Hyenas will be our bookseller for this event.

Featuring

Carolin Emcke

Carolin Emcke was born in 1967. She studied philosophy, politics and history in London, Frankfurt and at Harvard. From 1998 to 2013 she reported from war and crisis zones including Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Gaza and Haiti. She has written a number of books, and in 2016 she received the Pe... Read more

Hannah McCann

Dr Hannah McCann is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her research is located within critical femininity studies and she writes on queer identity, beauty salons, queer fangirls, and more. You can find her work in the Conversation, Feminartsy, and Overland, as well as jo... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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