A Queer Carnival of Ideas

A Queer Carnival of Ideas is a provocation of orthodoxy, set at the intersection of psychoanalysis and sexology, two major authorities of the Sexual, born of a shared ancestry, yet seldom seated at the same table. The Carnival is set to the beat of Sexuality Beyond Consent, Dr Avgi Saketopoulou’s landmark book. With great excitement we can confirm that Avgi will be joining us in Johannesburg, all the way from New York, for a six-day cornucopia of learning, connection, playing and thinking together.

A Queer Carnival of Ideas brings together psychoanalysis, sexology, activism and the arts in an exploration of sexuality, relationality, gender, race, traumatophilia, the limits of consent, opacity, and exigent sadism. The aim is to create a genuinely multidisciplinary space in which difficult questions can be explored with curiosity, rigour, creativity, and openness.

SASHA and GRASP have joined forces to bring you a programme that puts psychoanalysis and sexology into dialogue, and Avgi’s work under South African pressures around consent, trauma, race, and queer life.

If your work is in and with the sexual, and you want to delve deeply and queerly into what that means in South Africa today, you’ll be right at home at the Carnival.

Sexologists, psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists; doctors, nurses, physios and OTs; sex educators and coaches, social workers, bodyworkers, researchers, activists and students: all are welcome. While a background in psychoanalysis and/or sexology helps, please don’t let a lack of familiarity put you off. We’ll find our way into the material together, whatever your starting point.