I’m starting a new newsletter to keep you all up to date on my work, writing and activism. The newsletter will be coming out once a month with updates on everything I’m doing. You can subscribe here, or just out my first one below!
Dear friends,
Wow! What a year!
Firstly, apologies for taking so long to get this newsletter out. Just to confirm, you are on this list as you donated to my campaign to write Sexy Capitalism. As you probably all remember one of my promises was a monthly update on my work, and so far I have been extremely slack. But here we are with newsletter #1. The end of the year seems like no better time than to get started!
Lots of travel
Let’s start with some excuses. The Sexy Capitalism crowd funder finished in September, meaning it has been almost three months since it was done (I can’t believe it was that long ago!). So why the silence?
Well, some of you may remember I have spent the last year living in Edinburgh, and the last few months have been crazy. I spent all October living in Berlin and studying German, followed by two more weeks in the UK before I headed on holiday to the United States. I am now back home though, settling back into Canberra and getting back into a good working schedule.
But what about the book?
Don’t worry! This doesn’t mean I’ve been spending all your money on traveling while not doing anywork. Since the fundraiser I have made significant progress on Sexy Capitalism and am feeling confident about the next steps.
Here is where I’m at so far:
- Doing some base research.
This book is going to require a lot of research and I am diving head first into a lot of reading. So far I’ve done the fun things like setting up a research tracking system and developing lists of things I need to read and people I want to contact. Now I’m starting with the research proper.
As I write I am also reading Michèle Barrett’s Women’s Oppression Today, a classic marxist-feminist text, which is in particular important for establishing the idea of the “family-household system”, a structure:
in which a number of people, usually biologically related, depend on the wages of a few adult members, primarily those of the husband/father, and in which all depend primarily on the unpaid labour of the wife/ mother for cleaning, food preparation, child care, and so forth. The ideology of the “family” is one that defines family life as “ ‘naturally’ based on close kinship, as properly organized through a male bread- winner with a financially dependent wife and children, and as a haven of privacy beyond the public realm of commerce and industry.”
Barrett is one of the key writers in describing the family not just as natural but a political structure, one shaped for the needs of our economic system. She is key in fusing modern feminism with Marxist thought. I will be writing a review of Barrett once I’ve finished, which I will include in my next newsletter.
2. Developing a structure and working on the first two chapters
My key project for the moment is working on proposals for potential publishers. This requires a book structure and outline, as well as a completed first 2 – 3 chapters. I now have a draft outline developed on a spreadsheet and am working on chapter summaries. This outline works largely through a historical prism, tracking the nature of families, sex and sexual oppression through the period from the rise of industrial capitalism to the modern day. I will be overlaying this historical analysis with an materialist and ideological framework, infusing the key thinkers in these areas.
On top of this I am working on the first two chapters of the book. Chapter one will be a summary of sexual relations as they exist today. Here I describe what I call the “sexual paradox”; a description of our social system in which both family values and sexual freedom are co-existing in a fundamentally awkward, yet necessary (for capitalism) alliance. This paradox, or contradiction, I believe is inherent in capitalism and at the same time one of the major weaknesses of the system.
Chapter two will start our history lesson. It will start by looking at sexual relations in the periods prior to capitalism, starting briefly with early sexual activity (and the theories of Friedrich Engels) and then to look and sexual life prior to the rise of industrial capitalism (around the 1700 and 1800s). This will give us our base from where to launch into our analysis.
Both of these chapters are on their way and I will look to have them finished some time in the early new year!
Other work
On top of all of this I am still working on other projects, and in particular my first novel,Forgiveness. I am in the middle of my second draft of Forgiveness and am planning to have this done by April next year. Keep your eye out as I send more information on this in the future!
Also, If you’ve missed them so far, you can check out some of my latest published pieces:
- 3 Dec 2015, Green Agenda: Queer Liberation: An Interview with Dennis Altman
- 27 Nov 2015, SBS: On the verge of the post-antibiotic world?
- 30 Oct 2015, SBS: If love is love, then why exclude the polyamorous?
Get in touch!
Got any questions or thoughts, then get in touch. You can email me at simon_copland@hotmail.com and make sure you also check me out on Facebook andTwitter!
Have a great holidays and see you all next year.