Making Trouble

What happens when angry young rebels become wary older women, ageing in a leaner, meaner time: a time which exalts only the 'new', in a ruling orthodoxy daily disparaging all it portrays as the 'old'? Lives are assembled or fall to pieces through our passionate identifications with people, places and the multitude of other lures that inspire or betray us. But as the desires of one period mutate into the dilemmas of the next, the radical imagination struggles to sustain itself. Delving into her own life and those of others who left their mark on it, Lynne Segal tracks through time to consider her generation of female dreamers, what formed them, how they left their mark on the world, where they are now in times when pessimism seems never far from what remains of public life. Searching for answers, she studies her family history, sexual awakening, ethnic belonging, as well as the peculiarities of the time and place that shaped her own political journeys, with all their urgency, significance, pleasures and absurdities.