Regret, a Conversation with Ann Cvetkovich

Today’s episode is a conversation about the feminist politics of regret. Discourses of regret have strangely come to play a key role in right-wing attacks on feminism, particularly when it comes to the Right’s anti-abortion and anti-trans campaigns. The notion that one will come to regret one’s abortion, or that one will come to regret gender transition, have been repeated ad nauseum. Contra this conservative framing, the conversation (which will appear in a full special issue of Signs devoted to the topic of regret) is at pains to address regret as a complex and potentially instructive emotion that’s worth attending to in a nuanced way. The guest editors of the special issue, Laura Green and Chris Bobel, asked leading feminist affect scholar Ann Cvetkovich to help us think through these thorny questions. Chris Bobel is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UMass Boston. Her current project explores feminist activism inspired by grief and trauma. Laura Green is Professor of English at Northeastern University. In spring 2027, she will be the M. H. Abrams Visiting Professor of English at Cornell University. And Ann Cvetkovich is Professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her books include An Archive of Feelings and Depression; A Public Feeling. Her next book, Learning from the High Priestess: Affect, Femme Care, and Somatic Practice, is forthcoming from Duke University Press.