This lecture introduced autotheory as a feminist and embodied practice that combines personal experience with critical, philosophical, and political forms of thinking. Drawing from Lauren Fournier’s writing on autotheory and Sara Ahmed’s concept of “sweaty concepts,” the session explored how lived experience, affect, and the body can function as sites of theory-making. Through discussion and reflection, participants considered how autobiography and embodied knowledge can challenge ideas of objectivity within academic and artistic practices.
The lecture brought together works by artists, writers, and scholars including Madelyne Beckles, Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman, Amy Suo Wu, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Johanna Hedva. Through video works, theoretical texts, and artistic practices, the lecture examined how personal narratives can become ways of engaging larger social and historical processes, including questions of race, gender, illness, borders, migration, and identity.
Throughout the session, autotheory was approached not only as a form of writing, but also as a method of cultural production and collective reflection. Participants were invited to think about how embodied experience, language, and everyday life can become tools for theorising, world-building, and imagining alternative forms of knowledge and pedagogy. The lecture was delivered as part of a seminar for first- and second-year Bachelor students.
