UnConference notes; autism, feminism
Joanne Limburg: autism, feminism, grief and life writing; podcast. I won a grant for Home / non-mainstream education UnConference Sustainability: UnConference notes.
Joanne Limburg: autism, feminism, grief and life writing | podcast
I won a grant for a Home / non-mainstream education UnConference
Sustainability: UnConference sessions themes
Links: Climate change: behaviour change, CCC report; building homes; and podcast chat on The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Gulliver's Travels and Of Boys and Men
Thanks to everyone who came to the UnConference. There were over 100 of us who made the day so great (half the circle in the picture above). I’ve outlined the sessions called below in this letter.
I’ve been awarded a grant from Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures to hold an UnConference around Home Education / Education Otherwise outside of mainstream school. My aim is for 2024 sometime. If this is an event you’d like to be involved with in some way or know someone who might please let me know. Hit reply.
I’m holding a small meet-up that tilts towards progress, EV and the like. If you think this might be you, also hit reply and let me know if you want to come (early Oct).
There were also major healthcare investment conferences for me this week. China (crack down on ‘entertaining’ in certain parts of healthcare industry); and obesity spillovers (what happens to healthcare / the world once many people are on obesity drugs) were two major topics.
I put out my podcast with Joanne Limburg this week. I’m half way through an essay on why I liked Joanne’s work so much. It’s a guest post for Henry Oliver (who leads literary close readings on his Substack and Interintellect). Here is a section of the draft.
“…What happens when current people recognise a quality of themselves in past people?
What happens when those are untold stories, or told stories that bring a fresh perspective.
Her prose is coiled and clear. Her sentences are lovely. Certain of her paragraphs to me tilt over into prose-poetry in the way more ordinary movements transform into dance when controlled by a master.
This style and form serves to emphasise her narrative letter essays. They are essays in that they illuminate ideas anew. They are narrative as they tell stories. The stories of these weird sisters, her weird sisters. The story of herself.
They are at heart, letters. Limburg is writing them from herself to her sisters.
In these letters, Limburg recognises a quality of herself in these sisters.
In giving us these stories she reveals a truth, a humanity that have been hidden. Still in part hidden now, but in part being uncovered by works like these. She allows us to recognise these stories.
Stories of women. Stories by women. Stories of the weird. For thousands of years, these stories have lived in shadows.
I recall the wonder I felt at reading Sei Sonagan, who lived in Japan in the 800s. Why so few of these stories? …”
To prepare for the podcast I read her other work covering grief, Jewishness, OCD in both memoir and poetry forms. All great.
Here is the podcast and notes below.
Joanne Limburg is an award-winning British writer known for her poetry, novels, and memoirs. In the podcast, she discusses her latest book Letters to My Weird Sisters: On Autism, Feminism, and Motherhood, in which she feels a kinship with historical female figures and addresses letters to them.
Some notes on the conversation:
- On Virginia Woolf: Joanne found connections in Woolf's personal writings about feeling like an outsider and struggling to dress appropriately for society. This resonated with Joanne's own experiences. We chatted on how dress and fashion is seen in society.
- On Adelheid Bloch: Adelheid was murdered in the Holocaust. Joanne wanted to write her a letter as an act of solidarity, to say she is not forgotten.
Adelheid Bloch. (She is mostly non-speaking). She was a young woman who was murdered as part of the Nazi program of murdering intellectually disabled people or disabled people of any kind. We have nothing of her voice. We have only a few records, a very sad record and the words that condemned her to death which were horrible words; idiot, unworthy of life. I was thinking about those two words and how we stand in the shadow of them and what they meant for her, and what is the supposed link between them. So my letter to her is kind of exploring history because there's not much of her to say. Also, I wanted to write a letter to her to say, "You are not left out. You are a sister too, and I apologize for all the times you have been left out."
And,
…it was a matter of great importance that I write this letter to Adelheid and that people see that she's human and that she's not totally different from me. Because there's an issue in sort of discourse around autism, as I'm sure, sure. There's a difference between high functioning and low functioning. So there's constant stress between splitters and lumpers as there is with any classification.
We can't possibly be the same thing or we all are the same thing. Also, I tend to lump not because I particularly want to get all the attention that people imagine comes from being severely afflicted. It doesn't. I think actually what you get from being seen to be severely afflicted is ignored and pushed aside, not massive amounts of attention. But because I think it's safer if we hang onto them. If you can't have solidarity with someone as opposed to pity or care, they're not safe because they're outside identification. “
- On autism and motherhood: Joanne realized the so-called "refrigerator mothers" blamed for autism were likely neurodivergent themselves, profoundly misunderstood. The misreading led to damaging views of autism.
“ it seemed glaringly obvious to me that these so-called refrigerator mothers were neurodivergent, and that their neurodivergent presentation was being horribly unkindly and disastrously misread.”
- On grief: Joanne wrote a book after her brother's death aiming to create something beautiful, a monument. Grief comes in waves and is still raw for some types of loss.
- On writing: Joanne listens for an "echo" when writing, for something unexpected to emerge. She moved from notebooks to typing, which matches her thought speed better. Teaching helps crystalize her own thinking.
I know of some others who find typing better than notebooks.
- On advice: Joanne stresses compassion for oneself and others. She is drawn to how language shapes reality and is exploring that in current poetry and lyric essay work.
The conversation covers writing as therapy, Jewish identity, and navigating societal expectations as a woman and mother. Joanne offers deep insights from a life spent exploring profound human experiences through writing.
There is a transcript here. A video is available if you find captions or YouTube a more accessible platform.
PODCAST INFO
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3gJTSuo
Spotify: https://sptfy.com/benyeoh
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/benjamin-yeoh
If you are interested there is now a complex interesting (IMHO) set of podcasts that cover disability includin Stephen Unwin, Sally Phillips, Dan Goodley and David Ruebain. Look them up.
These are the UnConference sessions that were called.
Neurodiversity. A way to get there faster.
Socialising Water
Spreading the word by listening
Grift, Drift and Shift
Government as systemic investor
Equitable Ownership
What is responsibility?
How do we prioritise “good”
Now vs the future
What does double materiality mean?
Consumerism
Food security (as jokey to to health, migration and biodiversity)
Iraq: Water sustainability and how to improve it.
Can we rank climate action?
Policy Analysis
Circular Economy
Actions: What can lead to quick wins
Attention and Silence is the next Oil
Challenge the Growth mindSet
Trains and planes
Food
HOw can we practice chronos, regulated time, kairos, felt time, Aeon, Long now
Decarbonising whole communities
Philosophy: Concepts vs experience
Humanity and AI
Biodiversity markets, is nature the new gold
What is a nature positive futePurpose and profit, possible?
Create Finance SOlutions memes
Boardroom mindset
EVs, the answer of the problem
Systemic change as carbon offsetting
ESG for institutional investors
Religion and Environmental Responsibility
E \ acc : effective acceleration
Tell me the story of when you started to care about sustainability
Fix Elon
What do you mean by a fair and sustainable future
Communicating complex ideas simply
Education + Awareness + lifecycle equals efficient
Food insecurity and mobilising community
Engage and, or, divest
The value of nature
Green skills and green jobs
Progress vis consensus or legal imposition
Open abattoirs and animal burning with fossil fuel
AI for for social good how can data tech help
Indigenous communities and the sustainable transition
Creating lovable cities
The role of beauty and delight
ESG ratings, do you agree
Emission reduction vs emission removal
Flogging a dead hose or long end game, how to know
Infrastructure legitimacy in the era of climate change
How to unlearn in order to learn
Risks
What should the next UK government do?
How can we push current incumbents to creating the future (vs protecting the past)
Why don’t people know what is in their pensions?
In short, unlike traditional conferences with pre-set agendas and passive listeners, an UnConference invites all attendees to participate actively. Everyone is encouraged to propose topics, lead discussions, and contribute to conversations in a meaningful way.
While a conventional conference treats attendees like a passive audience to be entertained by the organizers, the unconference format gives everyone a say.
I think we should do more of them to create better connections and ideas.
Links:
Behaviour Change and Climate, UK CCC report.
Information alone is not enough to shift behaviour, but clear information campaigns for households & businesses are essential to help the public understand the relative impacts of actions & their role.Tyler Cowen and discuss Ursula K Le Guin amongst others.
Check out my Linkedin. Overall the evidence base is fairly weak and much more research needed here. The exec summary worth a read.
Fancy some smart people chatting about important books…? Tyler Cowen sat down with Jerusalem Demsas, staff writer at The Atlantic, to discuss three books: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, and Of Boys and Men by Richard V. Reeves. Spanning centuries and genres and yet provoking similar questions, these books prompted Tyler and Jerusalem to wrestle with enduring questions about human nature, gender dynamics, the purpose of travel, and moral progress, including debating whether Le Guin prefers the anarchist utopia she depicts, dissecting Swift's stance on science and slavery, questioning if travel makes us happier or helps us understand ourselves, comparing Gulliver and Shevek's alienation and restlessness, considering Swift’s views on the difficulty of moral progress, reflecting on how feminism links to moral progress and gender equality, contemplating whether imaginative fiction or policy analysis is more likely to spur social change, and more. YouTube here. But also on podcast and transcript.
Thanks for reading. Be well.