22nd Nov 2016 6:30pm-8:00pm
Edward Street Campus Lecture Theatre
Vicky Margree (University of Brighton)
Women, Biology, Technology: The Dialectic of Sex Revisited
Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex burst onto the feminist scene in 1970 and proved
immediately controversial. The book’s key thesis is that the origins of women’s oppression lie
in biology: specifically, in the fact that it is women and not men who conceive, gestate, give
birth to and nurture children. Firestone’s solution is revolutionary: since it is biology that is the
problem, then it is biology that must be changed, through technological intervention that
would have as its end the complete removal of the reproductive process from women’s
bodies. With its proposal for the development of artificial wombs, its call for the abolition of
the nuclear family, and its vision of a socialist, cybernetic, society, Firestone’s manifesto may
seem hopelessly utopian and out-dated. This lecture, however, will argue for the book’s
continuing significance for feminism today, as a text that asks provocative questions about
gender, biology, sexuality, work and technology, and the ways in which our imaginations in
the 21st century continue to be in thrall to ideologies of maternity and the nuclear family.
Dr Vicky Margree lectures on the Humanities Programme at the University of Brighton. Her
talk is based upon a forthcoming book on Firestone, which in turn draws upon her experience
of teaching Firestone’s text on the ‘Feminisms’ course on the Self and Society Option
pathway. She also researches in the areas of late 19th and early 20th fiction.
