Love & Lightning

Love & Lightning: A Collection of Queer and Feminist Manifestos (Valiz, 2025) is a thematic and non-exhaustive collection of queer, feminist and queer-feminist manifestos. Girls Like Us magazine and author Sarah van Binsbergen made this publication to showcase the different forms a manifesto might take, from classical, activist programmes to more poetic, associative texts. The manifestos highlighted in this book cross borders, formats and disciplines. They refuse binary logic, transcend our concepts of time and space and move beyond neoliberal thinking. Love & Lightning does not claim to be complete. Instead, it wants to give a good overview of the rich variations and continuing legacy of the genre, from past to present. The publication presents manifestos from 1851 until now, divided into eleven chapters with socio-historical and geographical contexts and many texts from Asia, Africa and Latin-America. Not only does it shed new light on the modes and styles of the manifesto, but it also inspires the reader to start drafting their own revolution, big or small.

The reading will take place in the presence of Jessica Gysel, Sara Kaaman and Katja Mater.