Lean on Me

Have you ever relied on the kindness of strangers? What brings people together to find hope and solidarity? What do we owe each other as citizens and comrades?

Questions of care, intimacy, education, meaningful work, and social engagement lie at the core of our ability to understand the world and its possibilities for human flourishing. In Lean on Me feminist thinker Lynne Segal goes in search of hope in her own life and in the world around her. She finds it entwined in our intimate commitments to each other and our shared collective endeavours.

Segal calls this shared dependence 'radical care'. In recounting from her own life the moments of motherhood, and of being on the front line of second-wave feminism, she draws upon lessons from more than half a century of engagement in Left feminist politics, with its underlying commitment to building a more egalitarian and nurturing world. The personal and the political combine in this rallying cry to transform radically how we approach education, motherhood, and our everyday vulnerabilities of disability, ageing and enhanced needs.
Only by confronting head-on these different forms of interdependence and care can we change the way we think about the environment and learn to struggle - together - against impending climate catastrophe.

Auteur

Lynne Segal was the Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College. Her books include Is the Straight Sex: Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure, the highly acclaimed Out of Time and Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy. She co-wrote Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism with Sheila Rowbotham and Hilary Wainwright. She was part of the Care Collective, who wrote The Care Manifesto, 2021.