Book Club Guide

The Argonauts

by Maggie Nelson · 2015 · Biography & Memoir

Key themes

Queer theory and the lived body — and what academic language misses
Love and its need for new forms — and new words
The pregnant body as a political site — and as an experience that exceeds theory

About this book

Part memoir, part theory, part love story — Nelson writes about her relationship with the artist Harry Dodge and her pregnancy, while drawing on feminist philosophy, queer theory and literary criticism. The Argonauts is a book about how language both creates and fails the experiences it tries to hold.

Published in 2015, The Argonauts won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It draws extensively on feminist and queer theory while refusing to let theory substitute for personal experience.

Discussion questions

The title comes from Barthes — the ship whose planks are all gradually replaced, so that nothing original remains, yet it is still called the Argo. What is Nelson claiming through this metaphor — about identity, love and continuity?
The book moves between intimate memoir and theoretical reference. How does Nelson manage this — and what does the theoretical apparatus add that pure memoir could not?
Nelson writes about pregnancy as a queer person partnered with a gender-non-conforming person. How does she use her specific experience to make broader claims about the body, gender and identity?
The book is addressed directly to Harry, Nelson's partner. What does this second-person intimacy achieve — and what does it risk?
The Argonauts has been described as the model for a new kind of auto-theory writing. What specifically does it model — and is this influence something to celebrate?