Rage and Dissent

This conversation originally scheduled to take place on Tuesday 20 July was postponed in response to current health advice and restrictions on public events. It is now a digital premiere event and can be watched from this page on Thursday 22 July at 6.30pm.

Find out more about our response to Covid-19 here.

They say, ‘Don’t get mad. Get even.’ But can rage itself be fuel for change?

British journalist Laurie Penny is among our most urgent contemporary feminist voices. Their work – including the books Bitch Doctrine and Unspeakable Things – combines activism and journalism to interrogate the promises and limitations of feminism, technology, popular culture, and class politics. They’ve described anger as ‘no more or less than the human heart rebelling against injustice’.

Bri Lee’s books – including Eggshell Skull, Beauty and Who Gets to Be Smart – explore privilege and sexism in the justice and education systems, as well as in individual lives. Much of Lee’s investigative journalism and legal advocacy centres on the need for stronger consent laws and improved sex and relationship education in Australia.

Join these two electrifying thinkers alongside host Santilla Chingaipe as they consider questions of power and fury: What does ‘safety’ mean in the workplace, in the streets and in our intimate relationships? What lessons are young people absorbing about gendered power dynamics? What is the cost of seeking justice and holding power structures to account? And how can we capture and wield collective anger as a force for transformative change?

This event will be Auslan interpreted.

Presented in partnership with The Capitol and RMIT Culture

The online bookseller for this event is Neighbourhood Books.

The Broadly Speaking series is proudly supported by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and family and the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund