Simon(e) van Saarloos on Playing Monogamy & Writing the History of Now

Sex Out Loud with Tristan Taormino

Writer & philosopher Simon(e) van Sarloos talks about their book, Playing Monogamy, newly translated into English. They discuss how to understand the world through structures, imagining what love can look like, and writing history in real time.

Simon(e) van Saarloos is a writer and philosopher based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. They published several books in Dutch including a novel and a collection of columns. In Enz. Het Wildersproces, Van Saarloos shares a feminist and queer report of the trial against the Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders. To learn a bit more about this book, check out a recent essay on the Gezi Park Trial in Turkey. In Het monogame drama, Van Saarloos critiques monogamous living and false notions of safety, proposing a nonmonogamous love life and a different take on ownership and property. The book was recently translated into English and published by Publication Studio, titled Playing Monogamy. Their most recent book, Herdenken herdacht, is a non-fiction work about queer forgetfulness, whiteness and embodied commemoration.Van Saarloos curates collaborations between artists, activists and scholars and regularly appears on stage as a lecturer, interviewer and performer.