A feminist paean to perversity: on remaking intimacy outside the Republic of Gender. Seasonal begins writing sentences and thinking thoughts they never thought possible. They want to give László the pleasure of being nothing. The more they come to like him, to value his sensitivity, his sharp mind, his aesthetics, his ethics, and the more they want his respect, the easier it seems to become to think about destroying him. A new set of capacities which they had only dimly sensed are now coursing in their muscles, their cunt, their blood, their mind. Abandoned by their Dutch partner after giving up their home and their job to follow him to the Netherlands, humanities scholar Seasonal finds themself single in a strange place for the first time in a decade.
Dipping into the rabbit hole of digital eroticism, Seasonal soon meets László, a male sub who volleys back their cerebral sexts and is seeking a dominant guide. His dating-app profile--a photo of Foucault and the ingenuous greeting "Hello, World?"--thinly veils his desire to be annihilated. It's a desire that Seasonal senses they can fulfill. But to do this means crossing the frightening gap between their desires and capacities.
Seasonal and László embark on an experiment in remaking intimacy outside the Republic of Gender. But as it continues, the two realize they are staging separate confrontations with domination: Seasonal finds they must confront their own relation to the violence and anger that marked their upbringing in working-class, small-town Australia, while László stages his own confrontation with his decision to leave Viktor Orbán's Hungary. As they attempt to improvise a theater of domination that opens up possibilities of reciprocity, the energies of their sexuality stalk this collaboration, threatening to give them exactly what they bargained or begged for.
A feminist paean to perversity in the tradition of Pauline Réage's
Story of O and Anaïs Nin's
Delta of Venus, Anna Poletti's
hello, world? dares to fully inhabit female power, and to fully face the violence, beauty, and uncharted territories of human sexuality.
一首對於反常的女性主義頌歌：在性別共和國之外重塑親密關係。
Seasonal 開始寫下他們從未想過的句子，思考他們從未想過的想法。他們想要給 László 一種無所事事的快感。隨著他們越來越喜歡他，越來越重視他的敏感、敏銳的頭腦、美學和倫理，他們越想要他的尊重，似乎越容易想到要摧毀他。他們體內流淌著一種新的能力，這種能力他們之前僅僅隱約感受到，現在卻在他們的肌肉、陰部、血液和心智中奔騰。
在放棄家園和工作追隨荷蘭伴侶後，人文學者 Seasonal 首次在陌生的地方單身，這是十年來的第一次。
深入數位色情的兔子洞，Seasonal 很快遇見了 László，一位男性下屬，他回應他們的智性性訊息，並尋求一位主導的指導者。他的約會應用程式個人檔案——一張福柯的照片和天真的問候「你好，世界？」——薄薄地掩蓋了他被消滅的渴望。這是一種 Seasonal 感覺他們可以滿足的渴望。但要做到這一點，意味著要跨越他們的渴望與能力之間可怕的鴻溝。
Seasonal 和 László 開始了一場在性別共和國之外重塑親密關係的實驗。但隨著實驗的進行，兩人意識到他們正在上演各自與支配的對抗：Seasonal 發現他們必須面對自己與在澳大利亞小鎮工人階級成長過程中所經歷的暴力和憤怒的關係，而 László 則面對他離開維克多·歐爾班的匈牙利的決定。當他們試圖即興創作一個開啟互惠可能性的支配劇場時，他們的性慾能量在這次合作中徘徊，威脅著給予他們正是他們所交易或乞求的東西。
這是一首對於反常的女性主義頌歌，延續了 Pauline Réage 的《O的故事》和 Anaïs Nin 的《維納斯三角洲》的傳統，Anna Poletti 的《hello, world?》大膽地完全擁抱女性力量，並全然面對人類性欲的暴力、美麗和未知領域。
For over twenty years, Anna Poletti has researched how media shapes the meaning we attach to lived experience. Her recent books include Stories of the Self: Life Writing after the Book (2020) and the Eisner Award-nominated collection Graphic Medicine (coedited with Erin La Cour, 2022).
