This ticket is for ONLINE access to this event. All registrants will receive their link to join via ZOOM. Attendees will also receive access to the recording on the Monday after the event, available to watch back for 3 months.
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Join us for this event in which Akshi Singh discusses her recent book In Defence of Leisure: Experiments in Living with Marion Milner with Josh Cohen.
The celebrated psychoanalyst Marion Milner lived for the entirety of the twentieth century. By the age of ninety-eight she had written nine books revealing how free time and creativity are vital for a fulfilled life.
Akshi Singh was born ninety years after Milner, in Rajasthan, over four thousand miles away from where Milner lived and worked. At first glance, the worlds of these two women seem entirely separate. Yet when Singh found herself standing at a crossroads in her life and grieving personal loss, she realised the questions and preoccupations Milner was exploring were her own.
In Defence of Leisure presents Marion Milner as a writer for our times. In asking the simple question: how do I want to spend my free time? Milner developed a method for discovering her true likes and dislikes. As Singh follows Milner's approach - from keeping a diary to painting, building a home to travelling to the sea - she discovers the importance of rest, creativity and play in all of our lives, and how it can open the door to achieving what we truly desire.
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Speakers:
Akshi Singh is an associate editor at Parapraxis and deputy editor at Critical Quarterly, and is the editor of a special collection of Critical Quarterly presenting new writing on Marion Milner. She collaborates regularly with the Derek Jarman lab, and writes for the London Review of Books. Singh moved to the UK from India to study for a PhD in psychoanalysis and literature with Jacqueline Rose. She is currently training to be a psychoanalyst at the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research.
Josh Cohen was born in London, where he has lived most of his life. He established himself as an academic in American literature and critical theory, before deciding to train as a psychoanalyst. His books combine these influences, exploring major contemporary issues like privacy, work, meritocracy and anger through the lenses of psychoanalysis, culture and personal experience. His books include How to Read Freud (Granta, 2005), The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark (Granta 2013) Not Working: Why We Have to Stop (Granta, 2019), How to Live. What to Do: How Great Novels Help Us Change (Ebury, 2021) and Losers (Peninsula, 2021). He has published reviews and essays in The Guardian, New Statesman, Economist/ 1843, Granta, Aeon and TLS. His latest book is All the Rage: How Anger Drives the World (Granta, 2024).
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Tickets: £10
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