Today is Virginia Woolf’s 144th birthday. I should bake her a cake. But since I live in the United States, it is difficult to feel like celebrating. Not when federal agents — ICE* and Border Control — have once again murdered an innocent American citizen in cold blood. Instead, I must speak out.
The murder victims
On Jan. 7, it was Renee Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother of three who was observing a protest against ICE in Minneapolis, Minnesota. ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot her three times in less than one second, including a fatal shot to her head, as she peacefully sat in her car while accosted by three agents.
Yesterday, Jan., 24, it was Alex Pretti, a 37-year old ICU nurse at the local Veteran’s Hospital, who was filming agents with his phone and trying to help a woman the agents had pushed to the ground for no apparent reason. Federal agents then pushed him to the ground, piled on top of him, and beat him with a pepper spray can. They then shot him dead as he lay there. At least 10 shots were fired within five seconds.
Both victims were white. Both victims were braving the bitter Minnesota cold. Both victims were trying to help their immigrant neighbors who each day are being pulled from their homes, their cars, and their workplaces. They are beaten and sprayed with chemical agents. They are kidnapped and taken to detention centers by masked and unidentified federal agents who delight in terrorizing communities and using their power to cause people pain.
These corrupt leaders refuse to do what Woolf advises in her anti-war polemic Three Guineas (1938): “fix our eyes upon the photograph again: the fact” and they advise us to believe their lies, not our eyes.
The witnesses who believe their eyes, not the lies, are everyday people who turn out on the streets of their neighborhoods to protect their communities. They do their best to protect vulnerable neighbors from lawless federal agents running amok with the full support and encouragement of the federal government — from our felonious president on down.
Eyes open, no one safe
Black people in this country have experienced all of this before. They have lived through slavery, lynching, Jim Crow laws, segregation, the civil rights movement, Rodney King, and more. But those of us who are white are not accustomed to thinking of our government as an entity that will hunt us down and cause us great harm.
That is all changing. Now we know that none of us is safe from the government we fund with our tax dollars, no matter the color of our skin or the country of our birth.
I learned this nearly 56 years ago on May 4, 1970, when four of my fellow students were murdered by the Ohio National Guard during a protest against the Vietnam War and President Nixon’s incursion into Cambodia at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.
On that day, National Guard troops fired somewhere between 61 and 67 bullets in 13 seconds, killing four and wounding nine. All were innocent, unarmed students. Two were protesting. Two were walking to class. I have not felt safe around uniformed law enforcement or military personnel since.
Woolf and the absence of photos
I have always wondered, as have many others, why Woolf did not include any photos of the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War in Three Guineas, despite referring to “the dead bodies, the ruined houses” numerous times.
I think I may finally understand. I have referred to the murders of two Minnesotans numerous times in this post, but I have included no photos. Somehow, it did not seem right to do so.
Instead, I felt compelled to use my words to speak honestly and bluntly — without any editorial cautions — about the events we are experiencing here and those who are leading them. Our leaders’ orchestration of illegal and despicable acts are calculated to distract us from the administration’s failure to release the Epstein files, while promoting a tyrannical regime that will have complete control over our country and the Western Hemisphere.
We must use all our faculties to resist. For, as Woolf wrote in Three Guineas,
we are not passive spectators doomed to unresisting obedience” . . . for a “common interest unites us; it is one world, one life (168).
Some birthday posts
Though I could not write a celebratory post for today, I am adding a few of those posted online by others.
Join Literature Cambridge for its fifth Woolf Season of lectures and seminars, all live online with leading Woolf scholars. The next session in the current “Woolf and Politics” season is Saturday, Dec. 7. The season includes one session per month until June 2025.
Here’s the schedule
Saturday, 7 Dec. 2024, Ellie Mitchell on Woolf’s War Diary
Saturday, 11 Jan. 2025, Danell Jones on A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Black Britain
Saturday, 8 Feb. 2025, Natasha Periyan on Education in The Years (1937
Saturday, 8 March 2025, Trudi Tate on Mrs Dalloway (1925) and the Vote
Saturday, 12 April 2025, Varsha Panjwani on The Politics of Orlando (1928)
Saturday 10 May 2025, Angela Harris on The Politics of Jacob’s Room (1922).
Saturday 14 June 2025, Claire Davison on Body Politics and Clothing in Three Guineas (1938)
All sessions are at 6 p.m. British Time and last a maximum of two hours.
As a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. – Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (1938)
I once wrote that famous Virginia Woolf quote on the wall of my office because it resonated with me. However, it has never resonated with me as strongly as it does today, the day after a U.S. presidential election that will allow a fascist to lead our country for the next four years.
Along with many others in the United States who value freedom, justice, truth, peace, kindness, and love — I find it devastating to face the reality of four years with a president who values none of those things.
But like Woolf — and like countless other women throughout this country and the world — I will not give up the fight. I will never surrender.
Instead, I will continue to fight for all the things I value. I will look to the words and actions of Woolf and others to guide my thinking and my life as we move forward to keep light alive in this dark, dark time. I will do my best to create a close community like the Bloomsbury group that I and my friends can count on for support.
If you have additional advice for me — and others — please do share it in the comments section below.
Virginia Woolf’s advice for defeating fascist thinking
Back in 2017, after Democrat Hilary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election to the most horrible of Republican candidates, I — like many people around the globe — was deeply concerned about the future of our country and our world. So I turned to Woolf for wisdom.
I never thought that essay would have a long shelf life. But as things have turned out, it still applies today — perhaps more than ever — as we grieve the defeat of yet another woman, Democrat Kamala Harris, who brought such brilliance and joy to the campaign trail.
Now, thanks to a Facebook reminder from Woolf friend, Emily MacQuarrie Hinnov, I will add a quote she shared from Woolf’s 1940 essay, “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid,” as we move towards a frightening four years with a man who admires dictators holding the highest office in our land.
Who is Hitler? What is he? Aggressiveness, tyranny, the insane love of power made manifest, they reply. Destroy that, and you will be free…Let us try to drag up into consciousness the subconscious Hitlerism that holds us down. It is the desire for aggression; the desire to dominate and enslave. Even in the darkness we can see that made visible. We can see shop windows blazing; and women gazing; painted women; dressed-up women; women with crimson lips and crimson fingernails. They are slaves who are trying to enslave. If we could free ourselves from slavery we should free men from tyranny. Hitlers are bred by slaves…We must create more honourable activities for those who try to conquer in themselves their fighting instinct, their subconsicous Hitlerism…Therefore if we are to compensate the young man for the loss of his glory and of his gun, we must give him access to the creative feelings. We must make happiness. We must free him from the machine. We must bring him out of his prison into the open air. But what is the use of freeing the young Englishman if the young German and the young Italian remain slaves?
Post-It notes written by visitors and added to a display at the “People Power Fighting for Peace” exhibit at the Imperial War Museum in London in July 2017.
This is the fourth in a new series of posts that will offer a global perspective on Woolf studies, as proposed by Stefano Rozzoni at the 29th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. If you would like to contribute to this series, please contact Blogging Woolf at bloggingwoolf@yahoo.com.
Editor’s Note: Feb. 1 is the deadline for the call for papers for the 30th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Profession and Performance, which will be held at the University of South Dakota in Vermilion, South Dakota June 11-14. Get the details.
By Profa. Dra. Maria Aparecida de Oliveira
The Woolf Conference happens in a friendly, warm and welcoming environment. It really enhances the sense of community. It is an international community of scholars from different parts of the globe to share knowledge on a writer we all love. The conference enriches our knowledge not only about Woolf, but also in relation to other writers and to different approaches, theories and tendencies.
Stefano Rozzoni of Italy and Maria Oliveira of Brazil at the 29th Annual International Virginia Woolf Conference at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio, June 6-9, 2019.
The great quality of papers forces and challenges us to do our best. Consequently, it helps us to improve our research. By following how famous scholars undertake their own researches, it teaches us new ways to develop our studies.
I joined the conference in 2011 in Glasgow and it has been such a huge pleasure, because it inspires my work and my research on Woolf. It has also been a great space for collaboration. I met many people to whom we have collaborated in different panels, projects and books.
Thinking against the current
The 29th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf aimed at discussing Virginia Woolf and Social Justice and was a great opportunity for us from Brazil to denounce the atrocities happening in our country under the administration of the current president, the unnameable.
Davi Pinho and I were thinking against the current and thinking back through Three Guineas to discuss our three dots: Education, LGBTQ+ and the Environment. That was only June and our situation has just been worse and worse, first fire in the Amazon, now an oil leak on the precious beaches of Northeast.
The conference was an invitation to think together about social justice, inclusivity, utopias and the future of humanities in our current political climate.
It must be emphasized that Brazil’s political situation is an effect of what is going on in the United States. So, we are together in this conference as sisters in solidarity, fighting and resisting the tyrants in power.
In what follows, I will present my view of the conference. Unfortunately, it is limited, because I could not attend all the panels, as I wished.
Woolf, age, ageism, and activism
Beth Rigel Daugherty, Leslie Hankins and Diane Gillespie presented a panel on “Portraying and Projecting Age, Ageism, and Activism” on day one.
The first panel I attended was “Portraying and Projecting Age, Ageism and Activism,” by Diane Gillespie, Leslie Hankins and Beth Daugherty, Woolf’s muses. Diane Gillespie’s paper was a very interesting one, on Leonard and Woolf and Age/ism. Leslie’s subject was about silent movies and the suffragette movement, it was an impressive panel, as always.
Following that, Beth Rigel Daugherty gave a very moving talk on “Virginia Woolf’s Aging Women and Me,” how Woolf’s novels are populated by women who struggle with the battle of aging – Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Ramsay, Miss La Trobe, Mrs. McNab, Lady Parry, the lady by the window – all of them losing their minds. The author reminds us that “aging is also a fight, a great battle on a daily basis.”
Woolf, African-American Modernism and Utopias
Sayaka Okumura of Japan and Maria Oliveira at the 29th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf.
Elizabeth Abel in her brilliant lecture “The Smashed Mosaic: Virginia Woolf and African American Modernism” talked about Woolf in relation to James Baldwin’s A Biography. Again, utopia was the main issue when she discussed “Cruising Utopia: The then and the of Queerness Futurity.” She said that Queerness is our future and hope.
Abel stated: “Forget the room of one’s own, write in the kitchen, lock yourselves in the bathroom…” and I continue… write in the bus, in a library, in a café, in a garden, by the sea, in a forest, by the river… but write yourselves, inscribe your bodies in history.”
J. Ashley Foster gave an inspiring paper on “Three Guineas and Developing the Standing and Digital Humanities Exhibition Surveying Utopias: A Critical Exploration,” linking war and peace to a feminist and modernist pedagogy inspired by Woolf.
Foster brought up Jane Marcus to say that a feminist pedagogy allows us to navigate between past and present, a kind of communication that enables us to perceive history in a different way. How can feminism construct another plot for history, social justice and hope? In this case, utopia is more than necessary.
Woolf, #MeToo, and suffragists
Dr. Anne Fernald and Dr. Tonya Krouse presented a delightful discussion on the plenary session “Woolf in the Era of #Metoo movement, asking how do we think of women in this frame? How do we connect Woolf, the second wave of feminism and the movement #Metoo?
They reminded us that in the 1970s, the feeling was of shame, women were not to be believed, so they remained silenced. Now, women are learning how to speak up, how to get together and fight. The authors also reminded us of the transformative power of literature to fight for social justice.
In the panel “Suffragist, Public and Private,” Eleanor McNees delivered a provocative and stimulating paper “Women’s Rights and Family Feuds: A Room of One’s Own, The Pargiters and Suffragist Responses to James Fitzjames Stephen,” linking Woolf to the first wave of feminism and to founding texts of that time, such as Subjection of Women, by John Stuart Mill and James Fitzjames Stephen, who fought for liberty, equality and fraternity. Moreover, McNees discussed Woolf’s participation in the women suffrage journal, her lecture for the London National Society for Women’s Service in 1931.
Mi Jeong Lee in her brilliant paper “Re-mapping Public and Private Specters of the Suffragette in Mrs. Dalloway’s Urban Parks,” analyzed the parks as public spaces for male imperialists, while women occupied domestic spaces, when women appear in the parks, we have the homeless, the old woman, the beggar in Mrs. Dalloway, a woman of no age, no sex.
Woolf and inclusivity
During the plenary Erica Delsandro and Kristin Czarnecki argued about “Woolf and Inclusivity” and they raised many questions:
Who is included and how?
Erica Delsandro and Kristen Czarnecki at a plenary on Woolf and inclusivity at the 29th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf last June.
As you engage in the work of inclusivity, or more particularly, the work of decolonizing the academy, what challenges are you encountering?
Are inclusive projects legible to our professional communities?
How are such projects approached, read and valued?
Are we shaking, challenging the scholarly canon?
What are the benefits of undertaking inclusive reading projects, projects that often cut across the conventional analytical categories in the field?
Does this approach to reading and research impact your teaching and your pedagogical choices? If so, How?
Adriana Varga presented a very instigating paper about “Alienation: A View of Social Justice in Tony Morrison’s Reading of Mrs. Dalloway” that raised a lot of discussions on the anxiety of influence, but also on how we can read Woolf backwards, reading Woolf through Tony Morrison and, in my case, through Clarice Lispector. That paper brought a lot of food for thought. It was really inspiring.
In the last day we had a plenary discussion “Woolf and the Future of the Humanities in our Current Political Climate,” with Mark Hussey, Vara Neverow, Madelyn Detloff, Benjamin Hagen, Susan Wegener, and Laci Mattison.
That was a moment to think about Woolf and utopia, since we live in moments that we are fighting and resisting and there are moments of paralysis, of hostility, of political despair. That is the Brazilian scenario right now, a moment of political despair and we doubt about our future.
Is the Woolf conference headed to Brazil as we fight against the mainstream across the globe?
We finished the plenary discussing Woolf and inclusivity, how much is it including or excluding? Isn’t time for us to discuss Woolf’s racism, imperialism and anti-Semitism?
I would love to take the Woolf conference to Brazil and we are starting to organize that. It would be also be divine to see a conference in China, India, Africa. At the end of the conference, I feel that social justice led us to utopia, to hope for better days and to keep fighting and thinking against the mainstream.
Comaraderie among natty young Woolf scholars at the Saturday evening banquet at the 29th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. L-R Todd Nordgren of the U.S., Cecilia Servatius of Austria, and Michael Schrimper of the U.S.
Virginia Woolf scholar Maggie Humm brought Woolf into the mix at the June 21 celebration of #WoolwichWomenRise!
Humm carried a placard paying homage to Kathleen Rance, Mayoress of Woolwich in 1937 ‘who would not as much as darn a sock to help a war,’ according to Woolf in Three Guineas (1938). It was the first time Woolf has been paraded through Woolwich as part of the Greenwich Festival’ Rise.
Maggie Humm (right) carrying a placard honoring Rance. It includes Woolf’s quote on the rear. With her is the current Mayor of Greenwich, which now incorporates Woolwich, holding a placard to the first woman Mayor of Woolwich (1930-1931).
