Books › The Argonauts
The Argonauts
232 pages
A fiercely intelligent, deeply intimate exploration of love, bodily transformation, and the limits of language.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting in a sunlit room with a brilliant friend who is simultaneously dissecting critical theory and baring her soul. It is a work of autotheory that moves at a steady, contemplative pace, demanding you slow down to savor its fragmented, lyrical prose. The mood is both fiercely intellectual and profoundly tender, creating a space where the messy, fleshy realities of pregnancy, queer family-making, and bodily transformation are treated with the same rigorous curiosity as the writings of iconic philosophers. It is an expansive, mind-altering experience that delights readers who crave vulnerability wrapped in sharp philosophical inquiry. You will leave it feeling intellectually invigorated and deeply moved by its radical insistence on the value of care and the fluidity of love.
- Mood
- contemplative
- tender
- expansive
- intellectually charged
- Tone
- intimate
- rigorous
- vulnerable
- fierce
- intellectual
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- queer family-making · the limits of language · bodily transformation · radical care · fluidity of identity
- The writing
- Fragmented, lyrical, and fiercely intelligent, weaving dense theoretical citations seamlessly into intimate personal reflection.
- The arc
- Moves from the dizzying vulnerability of new love through the profound, messy transformations of pregnancy and caretaking, arriving at a fierce, expansive acceptance of flux.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love to see rigorous critical theory applied to the messy, fleshy realities of love, gender, and domesticity.
Content notes
- pregnancy and childbirth
- medical vulnerability
- death of a parent
- transphobia
About the book
Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of “autotheory” offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author’s relationship with artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes the author’s account of falling in love with Dodge, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, is an intimate portrayal of the complexities and joys of (queer) family making.
Writing in the spirit of public intellectuals like Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, Nelson binds her personal experience to a rigorous exploration of what iconic theorists have said about sexuality, gender, and the vexed institutions of marriage and childrearing. Nelson’s insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry for this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.
Description from Open Library.
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