Anna and Grace invite you to gunnhilde’s leg, a critical theory reading group with a focus on the body and technology.
Each session will focus on an excerpt from a work of theory alongside a companion text or interpretation. We encourage you to look at the materials in advance and will provide pdfs where necessary. You don’t need to be familiar with critical approaches or any of the proposed readings to participate.
Sessions are hosted in Room 209 Birkbeck Central Building, Malet Street: AccessAble here.
Contact [email protected] with any questions or to join the mailing list for updates.
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Wednesday, 8 July 6.30—7.30 @ Room 209, Birkbeck Central Building, Malet Street
Moving on from our recent discussion of non-things, this session will focus on political ecologies of matter in Esther Leslie. We will discuss dust and crystals through reading excerpts from Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form (2017) and 'Devices and the Designs on Us' (2020) – pdf attached. You may want to dwell on the digital simulations discussed in the 2020 essay: Dust Storm (Manter, Kansas) 2007 and Dust Storm (Dalhart, Texas) 2007.
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Wednesday, 17 June 6.30—7.30 @ Room 209, Birkbeck Central Building, Malet Street
We will be reading Byung Chul Han and Dylan Trigg to consider things and non-things, virtuality, and tangibility.
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Tuesday, 19 May 6.30—7.30 @ Birkbeck Theatre, Birkbeck Faculty of Humanities, 43 Gordon Square
Our texts for May’s session are chosen by friend of the Leg, Jack! We will be reaching for a counter-genealogy of modern self-defence, reading from 'What A Body Can Do' (2019) and Self-Defense: A Counter Genealogy of Modern Violence (2022) by Elsa Dorlin. Both of these excerpts are available online: here and here.
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**We Are Making A Film About Mark Fisher: screening and discussion**
Friday 15 May, 18:30 | Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London
A 65-minute cinematic experiment (Close and Remote, 2025) exploring the continuing relevance of late theorist Mark Fisher’s ideas on capitalism, culture, and the future. With over 70 invited contributors listed the film blends documentary, performance, new music, and hauntological fiction. This screening will conclude with a roundtable discussion on the film’s depiction of Fisher’s ideas and their enduring influence in today’s cultural and political landscape.
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Tuesday, 28 April 6.30-7.30 @ Birkbeck Theatre, Birkbeck Faculty of Humanities, 43 Gordon Square
We will be talking about productive and surplus bodies using extracts from Francois Guery & Didier Deleule's The Productive Body (1988) and Beatrice Adler Bolton & Artie Vierkant's Health Communism (2025).
We'd also recommend the Death Panel/Red Medicine podcast episode 'The Past and Future of the NHS' as a companion, if these texts are of interest.
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Tuesday 24 March, 6.30 in Birkbeck Faculty of Humanities @ 43 Gordon Square, Room 106
This session will focus on animacies and animism in Mel Y. Chen and David Abram.
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Tuesday 10 March, 6.30 in Birkbeck Faculty of Humanities @ 43 Gordon Square, Room 106
This session will focus on two formulations of neoliberal biopolitics: homonationalism and ablenationalism. We’ll be discussing these ideas with reference to Jasbir Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages (2007), David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder’s The Biopolitics of Disability (2015), and Puar’s The Right to Maim (2017). See the reading pack below.
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Tuesday 10 February, 6.30 in Birkbeck Faculty of Humanities @ 43 Gordon Square, Room 106
Join us for a discussion of Julia Kristeva’s ‘abject’. We’ll be reading exerpts from Kristeva’s Powers of Horror (1982) and Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous Feminine (1993), which can be accessed via the reading pack below.
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Tuesday, 13 January at 6.30pm in Birkbeck Faculty of Humanities @ 43 Gordon Square, Room 106
This session we’ll be talking posthumanism via an excerpt from Rosi Braidotti's The Posthuman (2013). The reading pack also includes a commentary on Braidotti's position from Dan Goodley's article on Posthuman Disability Studies.
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Tuesday, 9 December at 6.30pm in Birkbeck Faculty of Humanities @ 43 Gordon Square, Room 106
We have something different in mind for our last session of term. Instead of discussing a set text, we would like to invite you to reflect on the themes of our discussions so far and ‘bring in’ something which relates to those themes. This could be a text, a writer, an object, an image, an artwork, a primary source, or anything else you like. In practical terms, you might want to read something aloud, have an image ready to share, or just say a little bit about what you've been thinking about. This will also be a good opportunity to return to the texts we’ve read and think about how they fit together.
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Tuesday, 25 November at 6.30pm in Birkbeck Faculty of Humanities @ 43 Gordon Square, Room 106
Our third session will focus on anaestheticised subjects and neurochemical selves in Nikolas Rose and Laurent de Sutter. The reading pack includes excepts from Rose’s The Politics of Life Itself (2007) and de Sutter’s Narcocapitalism (2018).
Gunnhilde's Leg volume three.pdf
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Tuesday, 28 October at 6.30pm in Birkbeck Faculty of Humanities @ 43 Gordon Square, Room 106
For this second session, we will be focussing on the concepts of biopolitics and psychopolitics as described by Michel Foucault and Byung-Chul Han. In the reading pack attached, you will find excerpts from Foucault’s The History of Sexuality Vol I and Han’s Psychopolitics.
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