CLASS DESCRIPTION
“Sphinx, sorceress, sacred monster. The revival of the hypnotic Clarice Lispector has been one of the true literary events of the twenty-first century.” - Parul Seghal, The New York Times
Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story writer Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) is a figure that remains partially shrouded in mystery to this day. Her works were largely unknown to Western audiences prior to the 2009 publication of her biography, Why This World? by Benjamin Moser. A subsequent wave of interest brought forth projects to expansively translate her work; readers were enthralled by her weaving together of disjointed prose with refined philosophical inquiry, unsettling depictions of her characters’ interior life, and her confrontation of meaninglessness through literary absurdism. One motif repeats throughout her texts: the dissolving of identity, the total collapse of the subject, who then turns to face the nothingness underlying existence in a state of ecstasy. It is for this reason that Lispector has been described as having a “passion for the void”; her texts evoke the desire to approach a dissolution of the self.
This breakdown of the self and all worldly significance is the foundation of existentialist thought, inspiring the exercise of crafting one’s own meaning out of the revelation that meaning is not readily given in the human experience. In the works of many existentialist thinkers (including Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Camus and de Beauvoir), this exercise is depicted as cultivating the self, breaking it down and its relation to the world in order to re-establish it more authentically, or indeed to leave it in its undone form as an attempt to approach oneness with all that is other. This latter form is equally relevant to the spiritual exercise of deindividuation in mysticism (such as in the works of Weil, Spinoza, and Bataille), the desire for surrendering one’s self for absorption into the divine.
This lecture positions Lispector’s writing as poignantly bridging existentialist ideas with the mystic. Through close readings of works such as The Passion According to G.H., A Breath of Life, Near to the Wild Heart, and The Complete Stories, her approach towards the “void” of existence will be demonstrated through her use of experimental language, fragmentary and interrupted, showing the absurdity of existence on the level of form; her questioning of societal conventions, particularly those imposed on her female characters, who often find themselves at thresholds, encountering moments that rupture the boundaries between domestic banality and metaphysical insight; and her grounding of existence as an intimate embodied experience, inseparable from the world, yet transcendent. The acceptance of meaninglessness - inhabiting the anxieties offered by the void and allowing it to disintegrate the self - becomes a deeply liberatory act.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Anna Titov is a writer and researcher in continental philosophy. She is a CHASE-AHRC funded doctoral researcher at the University of East Anglia, working on embodied experience and perceptions of nature in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Her areas of interest are phenomenology and existentialism, deep ecology, and esoteric spiritualities.
Instagram: @aatitov
DONATE TO FLP
Love what you’re seeing? Help The Feminist Lecture Program to keep our Pay What You Can ticket model, and to continue scheduling an incredible line-up of lectures by donating a little extra.
You can send us a ‘tip’ via our PayPal link here: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/my/profile
AUTUMN/WINTER TERM 2025
Monday 15th September
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
Female Sexuality and the Male Gaze
Monday 22nd September
Dr. Kate Pickering (she/her)
Feminist Religious Worldbuilding in Contemporary Art
Monday 29th September
Julia Kotziamani (she/her)
Misogynist Bureaucracies: Administrative Erasure and the Feminist Body
Monday 6th October
Noelle Perdue (she/her)
The Evolution of Post-AI Pornography
Monday 13th October
Erin James (she/they)
The Real Housewives of Racist TV Tropes: a Black Feminist Reading of Reality TV
Monday 20th October
Jo Harrison & Holly Isard
RECORDING ONLY - Breastfeeding as work: the contradictions of breastfeeding under capitalism
Monday 27th October
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
The Vagina Dentata: Myths of The Monstrous Feminine
Monday 3rd November
Catherine McCormack (she/her)
Eve and the Serpent: Snake Symbolism and Repressed Histories of the Feminine
Monday 10th November
Dr. Lena Mattheis (they/she)
From Thou to They: Gender Nonconformity Pronouns in Literary History
Monday 17th November
Giulia Palladini (she/her)
The Feminist Before the Archive
Monday 24th November
Gudrun Filipska (she/her)
Eco-Feminist Art and Science Fiction
Monday 1st December
Anna Titov (she/her)
Clarice Lispector: Existentialism and Dark Feminisms
Monday 8th December
Jennifer Jasmine White (she/her)
Fashioning Labour: Feminist Art and The Industrial Body
Monday 15th December
Anna Johnson (they/them)
Writing Motherhood: An Embodied Understanding of our Own Oppression
RECORDING
A recording of the lecture will be sent out by The Feminist Lecture Program after the event finishes, within 2 hours of the end of the class. This email will also contain any resources/reading list the lecturer shares.
Please add hello@feministlectureprogram.com to your email contacts to ensure you receive the recording as expected.
Please note that the recording will expire 7 days after sending.
PAY WHAT YOU CAN
Everyone is welcome to join this Pay-What-You-Can class. We suggest a donation of £20, however, we understand that may not be possible for everybody. Please be honest and pay what you can afford so that we can continue to offer our sessions on a donation basis.
MORE FLP…
Can’t get enough? The Feminist Lecture Program has our very own digital archive, where you can find some of the best past lectures from our back catalogue to rent and watch ON DEMAND. Check out our ever growing collection here: https://thefeministlectureprogram.vhx.tv/
Follow us on Instagram @thefeministlectureprogram
And check out our sustainable merch from FLP Studio at https://feministlectureprogram.com/shop & @flp__studio
And that's it!
We're really looking forward to you joining us x