Platforms: Nina Power

Over a decade ago, Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman appealed to a new generation of feminists and critical thinkers. PLATFORMS is a confessional essay-poem “in this season in microhell, in this jetlag of the heart.” Dissecting her own existence with philosophical enquiry, she wonders if “everyone must tend towards masochism or sadism?… or can one proceed, sexually, socially, without these ideas altogether?” Addressed to an unnamed lover, this automatic, surreal text was composed on a psychedelic New York train journey in 2019, where the ghosts of her friends and tormentors are visible through the window: Kierkegaard, alcohol, Kant wrestling with the spirits, her late friend and contemporary Mark Fisher. In light of a global “lockdown,” her visions of both Armageddon and Acid Communism now appear prophetic.