Personal Demons: a Conversation with Grace Lavery

How should we understand narratives in which bodies seem to want different things from the consciousnesses within them? Grace Lavery’s Personal Demons: Possession Narratives of Late Liberalism (Duke University Press, 2026) takes up contemporary debates over sex, desire, embodiment, and subjectivity through an examination of modern possession narratives. From cultural artifacts like Twin Peaks and Get Out, to the dianetic theories of L. Ron Hubbard and the emergence of “transsexual identity disorder” as a diagnostic category, Lavery elaborates the connection between possession narratives and our neoliberal order. What would it mean, she asks, to theorize queer emancipation beyond neoliberalism’s restricting vision of personhood and interiority?

Join us Wednesday, September 9 at BISR Central for a wide-ranging conversation about Personal Demons, featuring Grace Lavery, artist and writer Sara Clugage, and BISR faculty members Rebecca Ariel Porte and Danielle Drori. Together, the four will ask: What are the effects of metaphors of possession that pervade liberalism’s cultural landscape, particularly with respect to gender, race, and sexuality? What can psychoanalytic thought tell us about how we conceive of interiority and possibilities of sexual and racial misfitting, which are so easily weaponized against the “misfitted”? In light of capitalism’s constricting pressure on how we know ourselves and others, how do we build coalitions from incompatible cognitive commitments?

The event is free to attend with a suggested $8 donation. Beer, wine, seltzer, and snacks will be served. Please RSVP below.

Event Schedule

Wednesday, 7:00-8:30PM
September 09, 2026

$0.00

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