57: “Do More Crosswords!” The Sexual Politics of Language feat. Anna Shechtman

Ordinary Unhappiness

Abby and Patrick welcome writer, academic, and cruciverbalist Anna Shechtman, author of The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle, a book that’s part personal memoir, part cultural history, and part meditation on what it means to care about meaning in the first place. In typically overdetermined fashion, the three talk about the complex interweaving of language, sexual difference, and the vicissitudes of our appetites for food, clues, accomplishments, “solutions,” and more. Along the way, they unpack the écriture feminine of Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva’s idea of the semiotic, Luce Irigaray’s critique of phallogocentrism, the writing of Jane Gallop, and more. Whether on paper or otherwise, why do people love to create problems for ourselves, and how does the pleasure of solving any given puzzle relate to our apparently limitless hunger for new ones? How does the latent, overdetermined, and unconscious structure what’s manifest on a grid in a newspaper, magazine, or online? What did Lacan mean when he advised young psychoanalysts to “do more crosswords”? And how exactly does a crossword get made, anyway? Plus: plenty of puns, both punishing and pleasurable, frank talk about psychotherapy, and more!
Anna’s book The Riddles of the Sphinx is available here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-riddles-of-the-sphinx-anna-shechtman/20143426
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