Johanna Hedva

Sick Woman Theory

Hedva's forthcoming book, This Earth, Our Hospital (Sick Woman Theory, and Other Writings) is a "radically incomplete" project, "a political manifesto that merges with auto-hagiography,"^[9] about pain, trauma, and chronic illness as they relate to capitalism, vulnerability, and sociality. Informed by Hedva's experience with endometriosis, bipolar I disorder, panic disorder, depersonalization disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, and an undiagnosed autoimmune disease, the book's central project, Sick Woman Theory, emerged from consideration of people for whom dominant forms of political protest are made inaccessible by disability, illness, or trauma that confines them from public space. In response to the question, "How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can't get out of bed?" Sick Woman Theory offers a mode of protest with care and coping at its center, which asks individuals "to take seriously each other's vulnerability and fragility and precarity, and to support it, honor it, empower it," in resistance to oppressive power structures that do not account for the vulnerability of the body.^[2]

Influenced by Ann Cvetkovich's scholarship on depression, Sick Woman Theory takes illness as not a solely biological phenomenon, but a social and cultural one, claiming that "the body and mind are sensitive and reactive to regimes of oppression," and affirming the role of collective historical trauma in producing illness.^[10] Hedva also unseats as the supreme authority on illness the "Western medical insurance-industrial complex," and denies the requirement for an individual to be diagnosed for their struggle to be legitimated. Further, Hedva stresses that the subject-position "woman" was chosen for Sick Woman Theory, "because it still represents the uncared for, the secondary, the oppressed, the non-, the un-, the less-than, the not yet, the particular rather than the universal," and makes it explicit that the Sick Woman need not be a woman, but anybody who is not guaranteed care by society.^[2]

Sick Woman Theory agitates the binary opposition of sickness and wellness and implicates it as a capitalist construct, in which wellness is linked to ability to work, and sickness is construed as a momentary interruption of this ability. Hedva concerns themself with those who have chronic or terminal illnesses that inhibit employment and do not promise a return to wellness, and who are, as a result, de-valued in a capitalist economy. They also critique the notions implicit in the concept of healing: that the burden of getting better is on the sick person, and that they can do so if they invest in certain products, therapies, or practices. Rejecting this as "a neoliberal, brainwashing, and a white supremacist idea that stinks of upper and middle class privilege," Hedva proposes that coping, rather than healing, honors the continuous struggle of living in a society that perpetuates pain. Ultimately, Sick Woman Theory posits that vulnerability and the need for care are not an aberration but reflect the normal state of a body, and that radical political change requires structures of mutual support which acknowledge this.^[2][4][11]

On Hell

On February 14th, 2018, Sator Press published Hedva's novel On Hell.^[13] According to its publisher, "On Hell transcribes a body broken by American empire, that of ex-con Rafael Luis Estrada Requena, hacking itself away from contemporary society. Johanna Hedva, author of Sick Woman Theory, takes the ferocious compulsion to escape (from capitalism, from the limits of the body-machine, from Earth) and channels it into an evisceration of oppression and authority. Equal parts tender and brutal, romantic and furious, On Hell is a novel about myths that trick and resist totalitarianism." The book has been praised by Anne Boyer and Janice Lee. According to Hedva, "On Hell is my attempt at a 21st-century version of Icarus, from a crip perspective."^[14]

Processing Foundation

Since 2014, Hedva has served as the Director of Advocacy for the Processing Foundation, an auxiliary operation to the Processing open source computer programming project with the goal "to empower people of all interests and backgrounds to learn how to program and make creative work with code, especially those who might not otherwise have access to these tools and resources."^[15] Hedva joined the project based on their political activism, and their commitment to "open-source philosophy and practice, decolonial politics and action, and to promoting the attenuation of the boundaries between creative disciplines of all kinds."^[16] During a talk at a Processing conference on diversity, Hedva spoke about their goals for the Processing Foundation as "an institution defined by having to constantly re-institute itself," characterized by continuous growth and criticality.^[5] In their role with the foundation, Hedva helped establish a fellowship program in 2015, which focuses on issues of access to Processing software across society. Speaking on the program, Hedva states that "technology can be both a viable artistic medium as well as a model for sociality," where tools are learned and developed through exploration and collaboration.^[17]

Other work

Since 2012, Hedva has written and directed a series of plays and performances titled The Greek Cycle. These plays are adaptations of ancient Greek texts which have been rewritten to include feminist and queer concerns in contemporary discourses.^[18] Most take place in unusual locations; for instance, Odyssey Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, was performed in a Honda Odyssey minivan being driven by a performer.^[19]