Sophie Lewis (author) explained

Sophie Lewis (born 1988) is a German-British writer and independent scholar based in Philadelphia (USA), mainly known for her anti-state communism,[1] transfeminism, literary criticism, and cultural analysis, especially her critical-utopian[2] theorization of "full surrogacy",[3] her idea that "all reproduction is assisted"[4] as well as "amniotechnics",[5] and her advocacy for "abolition of the family."[6] [7] Lewis's personal website describes her as a "recovering academic."[8]

In 2019, Lewis was commissioned to write an op-ed in the New York Times to explain "How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans",[9] where she proposed that the reason for the UK's trans-exclusionary radical feminism[10] is its history of imperialism.[11] [9] Also in 2019, the far-right American TV pundit Tucker Carlson invited Lewis on his show to discuss her advocacy for abortion rights and reproductive freedom;[12] but she replied that she would only come on the show if Carlson donated $10,000 to the Alabama abortion fund Yellowhammer.[13] Instead, the Tucker Carlson Show aired public-domain footage of Lewis speaking about the right to not be pregnant[14] - resulting in her getting dogpiled by "pro-life" activists.[15] [16] [17] Her essay "Mothering Against the World: Mothering Against Motherhood"[18] has been made into a zine by an anarchist collective. In 2022, Lewis was featured on the BBC radio program Sideways, "It Takes A Village."[19]

Lewis gained further notoriety in September 2020 when she tweeted about the multispecies erotic dynamics[20] in the Netflix documentary "My Octopus Teacher," a controversy she later referred to as "octopusgate"[21] in an essay published in n+1 magazine: "My Octopus Girlfriend" (2021).[22] [23] Lewis has published many essays since 2013, on topics ranging from Marilyn Monroe[24] to tradwives,[25] in magazines including Harper's,[24] the London Review of Books,[26] Boston Review,[27] faz quarterly,[28] Logic,[29] The Baffler,[30] Lux,[31] Parapraxis,[32] Tank,[33] The Nation,[34] e-flux,[35] Mal,[36] Dissent,[37] The New Inquiry,[38] Jacobin,[39] The White Review,[40] and Salvage.[41] Lewis has published two books through Verso Books; Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism against the Family, published in 2019, and Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, published in October 2022.[42] Her third book, Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation, is published by Haymarket Books in February 2025.[43]

Biography

Lewis was born in Vienna, where her parents worked as journalists,[44] and raised between Geneva (Switzerland) and France. Her father is English, the son of a working-class father of part Welsh descent and a middle-class English mother. Her mother was a middle-class German liberal who was once a Maoist involved in the West German student movement at the University of Göttingen. She has described her childhood experiences in a series of personal essays concerning her family and, later, about the death of her mother Ingrid Helga Lewis (which occurred in 2019). She has described her maternal grandfather as "Hitler-supporting" and having served in "Hitler's army" and her maternal grandmother as "ex-Jewish". Her parents met in Vienna while her mother worked for the BBC German Service. According to Lewis, her mother discovered her Jewish heritage in 2008; her mother's family, the Sternbergs, had changed their surname and converted to Christianity shortly before the Holocaust "in order to embrace anti-Semitic Gentile life". Lewis' mother was an Anglophile who repudiated German culture and refused to teach her children the German language.[45] [46] [47]

Between 2007 and 2011 she studied at the University of Oxford, achieving a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature, and a master's degree in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy.[48] She further completed, in 2011–2013, a Master's in Politics at The New School in New York City, on a Fulbright Scholarship, and then received ESRC funding[49] to pursue a PhD in human geography between 2013 and 2017, at the University of Manchester. Lewis' PhD thesis, entitled Cyborg Labour: Exploring Surrogacy as Gestational Work,[50] focused on the political economy of the surrogacy industry. After completing her PhD, Lewis published her first book, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism against the Family, which was followed by Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation in October 2022.

Lewis is based in Philadelphia; she is a free-lance writer with an unpaid affiliation as a visiting scholar at the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies (FQT Center) at the University of Pennsylvania.[42] Dr Lewis also teaches online courses on critical theory for the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.[51] Having departed formal academia, Lewis makes a living as a "para-academic" and cultural critic supported by speaking gigs and her Patreon members.

Lewis's peer-reviewed papers have appeared in the journals Feminist Theory,[52] Paragraph,[53] Feminist Review,[54] Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society,[55] Frontiers: Journal of Women's Studies,[56] Gender Place & Culture[57] and Dialogues in Human Geography (in the latter journal, Lewis' paper "Cyborg Uterine Geography"[58] is the anchor for a response forum).

Lewis's German-English translations for MIT Press[59] include A Brief History of Feminism[60] (Antje Schrupp) and Communism for Kids[61] (Bini Adamczak).[62] Her translation of Sabine Hark and Paula-Irene Villa's book The Future of Difference: Beyond the Toxic Entanglement of Racism, Sexism and Feminism[63] was published by Verso Books in 2020. Lewis also translated Bini Adamczak's queer feminist theorization of "the antonym of penetration," the essay "On Circlusion."[64] In 2022, Lewis wrote: "I was, in retrospect, clearly inspired by circlusion when I wrote “Amniotechnics.”[65] [64]

Lewis is a member of the ecological writing collective Out of the Woods,[66] whose edited collection Hope Against Hope: Writings on Ecological Crisis is published by Common Notions.[67]

Views and reception

Lewis has been described as operating "a strikingly hopeful feminist Marxism."[68] She advocates for children's liberation,[33] communization,[69] family abolition,[70] a free Palestine,[71] trans rights,[72] and climate justice.[73] Her views have been discussed in conversations on podcasts including: This is Hell!,[74] The New Books Network,[75] Verso,[76] Hotel Bar Sessions,[77] The Death Panel,[78] Big Mood, Little Mood with Daniel Lavery,[79] The Podcast for Social Research,[80] The Heteropessimists,[81] Ordinary Unhappiness,[82] e-flux,[83] The LRB Bookshop,[84] Politics Theory Other,[85] The Dig with Daniel Denvir (Jacobin),[86] Against Everything with Conner Habib,[87] The Final Straw,[88] Rabbles,[89] and The Good Robot.[90]

[91] [92] [93] [94] [95] [96] [97] [98] [99]

Contrary to some people's belief, Lewis does not advocate for commercial gestational surrogacy. Instead, according to the academic Natalie Suzelis, "Lewis builds upon Kalindi Vora’s analysis of the surrogacy industry by using it to highlight the contradictions of capitalist reproduction."[100] The journalist Marie Solis in VICE[101] explains that "Lewis imagines a future where the labor of making new human beings is shared among all of us, “mother” no longer being a natural category, but instead something we can choose."[102]

Feminist academics have generally praised Lewis. For example, the historian Erin Maglaque[103] thinks that "Sophie Lewis is our most eloquent, furious and funny critic of how the family is a terrible way to satisfy all of our desires for love, care, nourishment."[104] The philosopher Amia Srinivasan has said that "Sophie Lewis is, as always, sharp, bold, compassionate and fearless."[43] The journalist Melissa Gira Grant opines, "Sophie Lewis and her expansive vision of feminism are desperately needed right now. She makes the work of undoing what 'womanhood' has come to mean look possible and irresistible."[105] The transgender novelist and professor Jordy Rosenberg[106] writes: "Sophie Lewis is at the forefront of a vital queer, trans, feminist communist movement to create an expansive field of revolutionary theory and strategy for today."[107] And the transgender theorist Paul Preciado says: “Sophie Lewis is at the top of a new generation of scholars and activists thinking the transformation of gestational labor within contemporary pharmacopornographic capitalism."[108] Finally, the author of the Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway, describes Full Surrogacy Now as: "the seriously radical cry for full gestational justice that I long for."[109] Positive reviews have also been posted in magazines like the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement, as well as blogs like LibCom.[110] Lewis's work has attracted a bit of international press in Germany, Scandinavia, Spain, Austria, Korea, Latin America, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.

Right-wing and religious commentators have written scathing reviews of Lewis, for instance Mary Harrington, Ben Sixsmith. Also, some more centrist, left-leaning, and social-democratic commentators have been very critical of her work, for example: Amber A'Lee Frost,[111] Nina Power,[112] Elizabeth Bruenig,[113] Tom Whyman,[114] Noelle Bodick,[115] Angela Nagle,[116] Nivedita Majumdar[117] and Antonella Gambotto-Burke.[118] Largely because of her views that "children don't belong to anyone" and "children belong to us all," Lewis has attracted a lot of criticism - as described by Richard Seymour in his essay "Notes on a Normie Shit-Storm."[119]

At the same time, Lewis has been invited to lecture[120] on family abolitionism[121] in many countries around the world and she has appeared on dozens of radio shows.[122] [123] [124] [125] Abolish the Family has been translated into Spanish, Catalan, German, Greek, Turkish, French, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese, Czech, and French. Full Surrogacy Now has been translated into Spanish, Korean, Romanian and Portuguese.

Publications

References

  1. Web site: Communizing Care.
  2. Hollow children: Utopianism and disability justice. 10.1080/0950236X.2023.2231295. 2023. Stone. Katie. Textual Practice. 37. 9. 1405–1422.
  3. Web site: Unthinking the Family in "Full Surrogacy Now". 10 June 2019.
  4. Web site: https://www.bostonreview.net/forum_response/sophie-lewis-lewis-emre/.
  5. Web site: Unmaking Property: The River as Amniotechnics. 18 May 2023.
  6. Web site: What is Family Abolition?.
  7. 45: The Fantasy of Family and the Meaning of Family Abolition feat. Sophie Lewis and M.E. O'Brien - Ordinary Unhappiness. en. 2024-05-20. ordinaryunhappiness.buzzsprout.com.
  8. Web site: Sophie Lewis – Writer, Theorist, Teacher. 2024-05-20. en-US.
  9. News: Lewis. Sophie. 2019-02-07. Opinion How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans. 2024-05-20. The New York Times. en-US. 0362-4331.
  10. Web site: Sophie Lewis on Trans-exclusionary radical feminism.
  11. Web site: https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article-abstract/9/3/463/319364/Fascist-FeminismA-Dialogue.
  12. Web site: Salvage Live: Toward Reproductive Freedom.
  13. Web site: Yellowhammer Fund.
  14. Web site: A radical defence of abortion | Sophie Lewis. YouTube. 4 June 2019.
  15. Web site: Hello to My Haters: Tucker Carlson's Mob and Me. 2024-05-20. Dissent Magazine.
  16. Web site: x.com. 2024-05-20. X (formerly Twitter).
  17. A radical defence of abortion Sophie Lewis. 2019-06-04. Verso Books. 2024-05-20. YouTube.
  18. Web site: https://haters.noblogs.org/files/2022/03/Mothering-Against-imposed.pdf.
  19. Web site: Sideways - 34. It Takes a Village. 2024-05-20. www.listenersguide.org.uk.
  20. Web site: https://theantimenagerie.net/2020-12-15%20My%20Octopus%20Teacher%20On%20Multispecies%20Eros%20a%20Lecture%20by%20Sophie%20Lewis/.
  21. Web site: https://www.patreon.com/posts/by-grace-lavery-41946224?l=es.
  22. Web site: x.com. 2024-05-20. X (formerly Twitter).
  23. Web site: 2021-03-08. My Octopus Girlfriend Sophie Lewis. 2024-05-20. n+1. en-US.
  24. Some Like It Hot: Notes from the Marilyn Appreciation Society. Harper's Magazine. Lewis. Sophie.
  25. Web site: Double-Shift: Dialectic of the Tradwife. 26 April 2023.
  26. Web site: Sophie Lewis.
  27. Web site: https://www.bostonreview.net/authors/sophie-lewis/.
  28. Web site: Sexuelle Unlust in der Pandemie: Lustgewinn durch Enthaltsamkeit. 17 May 2022.
  29. Web site: Do Electric Sheep Dream of Water Babies?.
  30. Web site: A Woman is a Woman? | Sophie Lewis. March 2022.
  31. Web site: The Derelict Dads of Bridgerton.
  32. Web site: Caren Allstrich.
  33. Web site: Tank Magazine.
  34. Abortion Involves Killing–and That's OK!. 22 June 2022. Lewis. Sophie.
  35. Web site: With-Women: Grieving in Capitalist Time - Journal #111.
  36. Web site: Collective Turn-off – Sophie Lewis – Mal.
  37. Web site: The Family Lottery.
  38. Web site: Sophie Lewis. 22 August 2022.
  39. Web site: Cash and Carry.
  40. Web site: Who Liberates the Slaves?.
  41. Web site: Mothering Against the World: Momrades Against Motherhood - Sophie Lewis. 18 September 2020.
  42. Web site: Lewis, Sophie. 2024-05-20. Verso. en.
  43. Web site: Lewis. Sophie. Enemy Feminisms. 2024-05-20. haymarketbooks.org. en.
  44. Web site: Solis. Marie. 21 February 2022. We Can't Have a Feminist Future Without Abolishing the Family. 10 October 2022. Vice.
  45. Web site: Caren Allstrich. 2024-05-20. Parapraxis. en-CA.
  46. Web site: With-Women: Grieving in Capitalist Time - Journal #111. 2024-05-20. www.e-flux.com. en.
  47. Lewis. Sophie A.. January 2023. Mothering against motherhood: doula work, xenohospitality and the idea of the momrade. Feminist Theory. en. 24. 1. 68–85. 10.1177/14647001211059520. 1464-7001.
  48. Web site: MSC in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance | University of Oxford.
  49. Web site: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
  50. Web site: Cyborg labour: Exploring surrogacy as gestational work.
  51. Web site: Sophie Lewis. 10 October 2022. Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies.
  52. Mothering against motherhood: Doula work, xenohospitality and the idea of the momrade. 10.1177/14647001211059520. 2023. Lewis. Sophie A.. Feminist Theory. 24. 68–85.
  53. Paul Preciado's Uterine Politics: Abolish the Family or Reclaim Confiscated Queer Genetic Patrimony?. 10.3366/para.2023.0419. 2023. Lewis. Sophie. Paragraph. 46. 74–89.
  54. Open Space: Less 'Population' Talk, more Kin–Making: On Manchester's Birth Festival. 10.1057/s41305-017-0084-5. 2017. Lewis. Sophie A.. Feminist Review. 117. 193–199.
  55. Defending Intimacy against What? Limits of Antisurrogacy Feminisms. 10.1086/692518. 2017. Lewis. Sophie. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 43. 97–125.
  56. Surrogacy as Feminism: The Philanthrocapitalist Framing of Contract Pregnancy. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 2019. 40. 1. 1–38. Lewis. Sophie. 10.1353/fro.2019.a719762.
  57. International Solidarity in reproductive justice: Surrogacy and gender-inclusive polymaternalism. 10.1080/0966369X.2018.1425286. 2018. Lewis. Sophie. Gender, Place & Culture. 25. 2. 207–227.
  58. Cyborg uterine geography. 10.1177/2043820618804625. 2018. Lewis. Sophie. Dialogues in Human Geography. 8. 3. 300–316.
  59. Web site: Sophie Lewis.
  60. Web site: A Brief History of Feminism.
  61. Web site: Communism for Kids.
  62. Web site: Ritner. Jesse. 2019-02-27. A Brief History of Feminism by Patu (illustrations) and Antje Schrupp and translated by Sophie Lewis (2017). 2024-05-20. Not Even Past. en-US.
  63. Web site: The Future of Difference.
  64. Web site: Lewis. Sophie. Adamczak. Bini. 2022-08-22. Six years (and counting) of circlusion. 2024-05-20. The New Inquiry. en-US.
  65. Web site: Amniotechnics. 25 January 2017.
  66. Web site: Out of the Woods.
  67. Web site: Hope Against Hope: Out of the Woods collective.
  68. Web site: Boyd. Hanne Blank. 2023-08-25. 'Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation' by Sophie Lewis. 2024-05-20. LIBER Review. en-US.
  69. Web site: Beyond the End of the World: M.E. O'Brien's Family Abolition • Protean Magazine. 29 September 2023.
  70. Abolition of the family: The most infamous feminist proposal. 10.1177/14647001211015841. 2023. Weeks. Kathi. Feminist Theory. 24. 3. 433–453.
  71. Web site: Some of my best enemies are feminists: On Zionist feminism. 8 March 2024.
  72. Web site: SERF 'n' TERF. 6 February 2017.
  73. Web site: Out of the Woods Collective, an interview on eco-fascism.
  74. Web site: Abolish the Family / Sophie Lewis.
  75. Web site: Sophie Lewis, "Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation" (Verso, 2022).
  76. Web site: Abolish the Family | Sophie Lewis speaks to Ben Smoke.
  77. Web site: Episode 84: Abolition of the Family (With Sophie Lewis) - Hotel Bar Podcast. 17 February 2023.
  78. Web site: Death Panel: Teaser - the Machine for the Individual w/ Sophie Lewis (10/24/22) on Apple Podcasts.
  79. Web site: Seeking Stable Chosen Family. Spotify.
  80. Web site: Podcast for Social Research, Episode 52: The End of Abortion. Spotify.
  81. Web site: Episode Five: Domestic Ecologies and Family Abolition. Spotify.
  82. Web site: 45: The Fantasy of Family and the Meaning of Family Abolition feat. Sophie Lewis and M.E. O'Brien. YouTube. 16 March 2024.
  83. Web site: Sophie Lewis on Full Surrogacy Now. Spotify.
  84. Web site: London Review Bookshop Podcast: Sophie Lewis & Lola Olufemi: Abolish the Family on Apple Podcasts.
  85. Web site: Israel and the history of imperial feminism w/ Sophie Lewis Politics Theory Other Podcast. 17 April 2024.
  86. Web site: Abolish the Family with Sophie Lewis. 11 July 2019.
  87. Web site: AEWCH 106: SOPHIE LEWIS or FAMILIES, QUARANTINES, AND WITCHES.
  88. Web site: Abortion, Family, Queerness and Private Property with Sophie Lewis | the Final Straw Radio Podcast. 10 July 2022.
  89. Web site: Rabbles: Sophie Lewis on Shulamith Firestone on Apple Podcasts.
  90. Web site: Sophie Lewis on Techno-Feminisms and Why Nature is Far Stranger Than We Think - the Good Robot.
  91. Web site: Abolish the Family / Sophie Lewis. 2024-05-20. This Is Hell!.
  92. Web site: Sophie Lewis, "Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation" (Verso, 2022). 2024-05-20. New Books Network. en.
  93. Web site: Episode 84: Abolition of the Family (with Sophie Lewis) – Hotel Bar Podcast. 17 February 2023. 2024-05-20. en-US.
  94. Web site: Death Panel: Teaser - The Machine for the Individual w/ Sophie Lewis (10/24/22) on Apple Podcasts. 2024-05-20. Apple Podcasts. en-US.
  95. Web site: Otto. Mark. 2019-07-11. Abolish the Family with Sophie Lewis. 2024-05-20. The Dig. en-us.
  96. Web site: 2022-07-10. Abortion, Family, Queerness and Private Property with Sophie Lewis The Final Straw Radio Podcast. 2024-05-20. en-US.
  97. Web site: The Good Robot : Sophie Lewis on Techno-Feminisms and Why Nature is Far Stranger Than We Think sur Apple Podcasts. 2024-05-20. Apple Podcasts. fr-FR.
  98. 45: The Fantasy of Family and the Meaning of Family Abolition feat. Sophie Lewis and M.E. O'Brien. 2024-03-16. Ordinary Unhappiness. 2024-05-20. YouTube.
  99. Web site: Other. Politics Theory. 2024-04-17. Israel and the history of imperial feminism w/ Sophie Lewis Politics Theory Other Podcast. 2024-05-20. Podtail. it.
  100. Web site: Surrogacy, Value, and Social Reproduction: A Review of Full Surrogacy Now Mediations Journal of the Marxist Literary Group. 2024-05-20. mediationsjournal.org.
  101. Web site: We Can't Have a Feminist Future Without Abolishing the Family. 21 February 2020.
  102. Web site: Solis. Marie. 2020-02-21. We Can't Have a Feminist Future Without Abolishing the Family. 2024-05-20. Vice. en.
  103. Web site: Red love, for all. 23 September 2022.
  104. Web site: Maglaque. Erin. 2022-09-23. Red love, for all. 2024-05-20. New Statesman. en-US.
  105. Web site: Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family – Sophie Lewis. 2024-05-20. en-US.
  106. Web site: https://www.jordy-rosenberg.com/.
  107. Web site: Abolish the Family. 2024-05-20. Verso. en.
  108. Book: Abolish the Family Sophie Lewis London Review Bookshop. 2022-10-04. 978-1-83976-719-7. en-GB. Lewis. Sophie. Verso Books.
  109. Web site: Full Surrogacy Now. 2024-05-20. ICI Berlin. en-US.
  110. Web site: Quick positive comments on Abolish the Family by Sophie Lewis libcom.org. 2024-05-20. libcom.org. en.
  111. Web site: Excerpt: /342/ Maybe Don't Abolish the Family? W/ Amber A'Lee Frost | Bungacast.
  112. Web site: Time to ask "But what about the children?" | Nina Power. 14 December 2023.
  113. Web site: Mother Wars. 25 May 2021.
  114. Web site: https://www.patreon.com/posts/once-again-tom-73242208.
  115. Web site: https://www.patreon.com/posts/beyond-backlasch-104601041.
  116. Web site: Products of Gestational Labor. 15 December 2020.
  117. Web site: Labor, Love, and Capital.
  118. Web site: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/is-it-time-to-abolish-the-idea-of-family/news-story/728eb155d58e25547f422bc09b81e42a.
  119. Web site: Seymour. Richard. 2022-01-27. Abolition: Notes on a Normie Shitstorm by Richard Seymour. 2024-05-20. Salvage. en-US.
  120. Web site: ICA | Staying with the Violence: Womb Work and Family Abolition.
  121. Web site: Beyond Gender Collective: Abolish the Family!. 8 June 2023.
  122. Web site: 2023-02-21. Family abolition the focus of upcoming lecture by Sophie Lewis Society for the Humanities. 2024-05-20. societyhumanities.as.cornell.edu. en.
  123. Web site: Youth Liberation and Family Abolition: Forgotten Histories of Revolutionary Reproductive Politics. 2024-05-20. University of Rochester Calendar. en.
  124. Web site: Amsterdam. Universiteit van. 2024-01-25. Familism versus Gender Freedom? 200 Years of Western Struggles over the Family - ARC-GS. 2024-05-20. Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality - University of Amsterdam. en.
  125. Web site: A Happy Ending for the Capitalist Family. 2024-05-20. www.rektoverso.be.

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