I’m pleased to share a recording I made of part of the introduction to Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography (Routledge Mental Health, 2023) as one of the “Anarchist Essays” hosted by the Anarchism Research Group, based at Loughborough University in the UK. See below.
The introduction to Queer Tolstoy (chapter 2) is available open-access for reading here.
Please join the Bureau of General Services–Queer Division (BGSQD) online on Wednesday, March 22, for a discussion about the newly released Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography with author Javier Sethness Castro and Joe Scheip, coordinator of Anarchist Political Ecology. Queer Tolstoy is a multidimensional work combining psychoanalysis, political history, LGBTQ+ studies, sexology, ethics, and theology to explore the life and art of Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Our conversation will begin by contemplating queerness as a concept, based in the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s ideas of universal bisexuality and polymorphous perversity.
We will review Tolstoy’s same-sex attachments, from childhood to old age, and consider how the artist’s underappreciated queerness influenced his anarchist and anti-militarist politics. We will not, however, shy away from Lev’s contradictions and hypocrisy, whether as a landlord, a sexist, or a difficult husband to Sofia Tolstaya. Finally, before turning to Q&A with the audience, we will contrast Tolstoy’s vision of free love and universal peace with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fascist crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community and genocidal wars on Syria and Ukraine.
We encourage attendees to donate to Solidarity Collectives in support of anti-authoritarian fighters in Ukraine.
The introduction of Queer Tolstoy (chapter 2) is now available open-access.
Please register on Eventbrite to participate in our conversation on Wednesday, March 22!
I am very excited to announce that my newest book, Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography, will soon be available from Routledge! Pre-orders will begin on January 26, 2023, and it will come out on February 16, 2023.
Queer Tolstoy is a multidimensional work combining psychoanalysis, political history, LGBTQ+ studies, sexology, ethics, and theology to explore the life and art of Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.
Using a psychobiographical framework, Sethness Castro uncovers profoundly queer dimensions in Tolstoy’s life experiences and art. Deftly contributing to the progressive and radical analysis of gender and sexuality, this book examines how Tolstoy’s erotic dissidence informed his anarchist politics, anti-militarist ideals, and voluminous literary production. Sethness Castro analyzes the influence of Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Cervantes, Rousseau, Kant, Herzen, Proudhon, Chernyshevsky, and his mother Marya Volkonskaya on Tolstoy’s writings. Furthermore, he details the artist’s emblematic linking of LGBTQ+ desire with moral and erotic self-determination and resistance to Tsarist despotism—especially, in War and Peace.
This book is vital reading for those interested in the intersection of literature, psychoanalysis, Queer Studies, and Russian history.
1. Theoretical Preface on Queer Anarchism
2. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy: A Queer, Christian-Anarchist Writer
3. The Life and Death of a “Holy Fool”
4. Humanism, Militarism, and Imperialism in The Cossacks
5. War and Peace: An Anarcho-Populist Verbal Icon
6. War and Peace, Book One: “Andrei Bolkonsky”
7. War and Peace, Book Two: “Natasha Rostova”
8. War and Peace, Book Three: “The Year 1812”
9. War and Peace, Book Four: “Pierre Bezukhov”
10. Conclusion: The Psychodynamics of Hierarchy
‘Sethness’s excellent book is a wide-ranging and erudite examination of Tolstoy through the lenses of queerness and anarchism, and what is remarkable is how many contradictions and mysteries in Tolstoy’s life and work get clarified by this double focus. It is as if he had suddenly popped into three dimensions. The close reading of War and Peace is full of startling new insights, and the study as a whole brings Tolstoy into our time in a new and important way. Wonderful to see!’
- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future, USA
‘This passionate, ground breaking study of Tolstoy’s bisexuality, politics and art offers fascinating new insights into our understanding of the Russian writer’s life. By detailing Tolstoy’s relationships, experiences and creative process, the author reveals Tolstoy’s far sighted literary support for what we would now call LGBT+ liberation, his resistance to war and oppression, and his support for egalitarian social change. Bravo!’
- Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner and Director, Peter Tatchell Foundation, UK
Available for pre-order in January 2023 here!
Notes toward an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism 