Queer hedonism isn’t simply about the pursuit of pleasure — it’s about survival, solidarity, and the slippery ecstasies that shape our futures. In Roses for Hedone, writer and activist Prishita Maheshwari-Aplin builds a sensuous, subversive archive of queer pleasure: one rooted not in excess for excess’ sake, but in erotic intention, collective care, and the refusal of shame. Drawing on ancient Greek modes of love, underground kink rituals, and the choreography of protest and party alike, their work reframes pleasure as both a method of resistance and a system of mutual aid.
In this conversation, we discuss pleasure-mycelia, vulnerability as a political method, what it means to write from the pulse of desire without asking permission, and how sensory pleasure might guide us toward utopian, plural futures.
You frame queer hedonism as more than just pleasure-seeking — it is a method of survival and resistance. How do you see pleasure as an active agent in reshaping oppressive systems and creating new, liberatory spaces?
The pursuit of pleasure is a reason to gather and a conduit for change. The transformative power our shared pleasure holds helps us imagine and model liberatory worlds in the present — a process that is crucial for creation of a better future. But it’s also not enough on its own. That’s why the book makes a case for expanding our notions and preconceptions around hedonism, rooting our pleasure in a forward-looking intentionality.
Writing about queerness, especially in a way that celebrates pleasure, often invites vulnerability. How do you navigate the balance between personal experience and broader political or philosophical arguments in your work?
Thank you for this question! But honestly it’s never a balance I consciously feel I have to create or a barrier to navigate. Perhaps some would consider me naive, that I wear my heart too much on my sleeve, but my political writing and organising has always been deeply embedded in personal experience and vulnerability. The political, theoretical and philosophical understandings that have come to be a part of me have formed partly as a result of my life thus far. My journey of migration, my experiences of race and gender, euphoric raves, tearful protests, and my relationships with lovers and family.
A patriarchal and white academic institution would have us believe that the only route to developing valid arguments is through rigorous objective thought. But I believe it impossible, and perhaps harmful, for us to untangle our understanding of ourselves from our cultural experiences. I also think this understanding allows there to be flexibility in our approach. As we grow, we may contradict ourselves, we may change our minds. I think this is all key to creating a deep robust worldview and praxis.
A patriarchal and white academic institution would have us believe that the only route to developing valid arguments is through rigorous objective thought. But I believe it impossible, and perhaps harmful, for us to untangle our understanding of ourselves from our cultural experiences. I also think this understanding allows there to be flexibility in our approach. As we grow, we may contradict ourselves, we may change our minds. I think this is all key to creating a deep robust worldview and praxis.
Pleasure is often viewed as something personal, but your work suggests it has a broader social and collective impact. How does queer hedonism function as a system of mutual care and solidarity?
In the book, I draw on the work of scientists and theorists before me in highlighting parallels between fungal mycelia, underground networks that play a key role in how ecosystems communicate, and the connections that exist between and within communities. It’s this pleasure mycelia that we build and strengthen when we have fun together — when we cum, rage, create, rave together — when we show up for one another. It’s this mycelia that helps us respond in solidarity with more empathy, efficiency and coordination at times of crises. And also helps us uphold our values and to make intentional decisions around how we relate to the world around us.
Embodiment feels central to Roses for Hedone. How does your own sensory experience influence your writing process? Do you find yourself engaging with certain rituals when writing?
Yes, 100%! I’m a very sensorily sensitive person, so I generally need to create the right conditions for writing. Usually I listen to electronic music, have plenty of water and delicious drinks on hand, some gum to chew on as a stim and maybe some dark chocolate. My bedroom is usually my writing sanctuary, but a lot of this book was written by poolsides in Tuscany and Goa, and at Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille, where I plugged into the world sometimes bleeding through the music in my headphones, and let these settings inspire the words to flow. I specifically listened to Taahliah’s closing set from Field Manoeuvres 2024 on repeat while writing the second half of Roses for Hedone — honestly don’t know if I could’ve done it without those ninety minutes of exhilarating bliss!
In an era of rising transphobia, hate crimes, and political instability, pleasure can feel like a radical act. How do you balance the urgency of activism with the necessity of joy and erotic fulfillment?
I try to not think of it as a balance, but rather as all part of the same fight, the same journey. The joy and erotic fulfillment are, as you say, necessary and I truly believe that, when engaged through the lens of a queer futurity and coupled with tangible political and or community action, they are activism. This is the hedono-futurism of which I speak in the book.
You reference the Ancient Greek understanding of love’s multiplicity. How can reclaiming these historical frameworks help us imagine new, expansive forms of intimacy and kinship?
We can have a tendency to reinvent the wheel, partly because our histories have been suppressed and partly perhaps because we want the glory of being the first. But I think that sometimes the most can be gathered from looking into historical frameworks, adapting them to reflect a modern context. The Ancient Greeks recognised the breadth and non-binary nature of love, we’re not simply in love or not in love. And we don’t experience love only as romantic and non-romantic. I wouldn’t suggest that these expansive forms of intimacy and kinship that I explore are new. But I do hope that understanding hedonism as a pursuit of pleasures that mirror multi-fold variations on love can help us to engage with it with more care.
There’s often a tension between mainstream LGBTQI+ visibility and more radical, embodied expressions of queer joy. How do you navigate this tension, ensuring that queer hedonism remains a tool of liberation rather than assimilation?
As I write in my introduction, “When practised within an overarching framework and queer intention where individuals seek to “invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live” (bell hooks), our hedonism must, in fact, venture to be harm-reducing.” My understanding of queerness is rooted in that quote by bell hooks, which entirely divorces it from the pursuit of assimilation. Thus, for me, queer hedonism, and especially hedono-futurism, are only enacted when they are intentionally practiced as pathways to imagine and create liberatory futures.
Your book sits within a growing canon of queer theoretical and literary texts. Who are the writers — contemporary or historical — that have most influenced your work? And in what ways do you see yourself building on or diverging from them?
I admire and am inspired by such a wide range of queer theorists, some of whom are referenced or quoted in Roses for Hedone: Foucault, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, José Esteban Muñoz, Jack Halberstam, McKenzie Wark. But I’m not sure it’s for me to say how I’m building on or diverging from them. I’ve drawn from their works, digesting them through my own lens and lived experience as a Brown femme non-binary migrant, and what has emerged is simply what makes the most sense to me. I guess we’ll see if others agree!
Queer writers often challenge the constraints of language to articulate experiences that evade categorisation. Did you experiment with form or style in Roses for Hedone to better capture the fluidity of queer pleasure and hedonism?
I absolutely love when writers play with form as a mechanism for storytelling. There are some small nods to the evasion and dismantling of binaries. But with so much story to tell in this pocket-sized book, I decided to prioritise prose over form. I look forward to exploring style more in the future, though!
Your book suggests that pleasure is not just a present-tense experience but a way of imagining the future. What role does sensory experience touch, taste, movement, embodiment, play in constructing utopian queer futures?
I love that you’ve drawn out the role of sensory experience here, because I think that’s at the crux of it all. It’s exactly this, the momentum created by synchronous dance and thumping beats, the taste of shared meals, the touch (and sometimes the deprivation of) in eroticism and kink, and healing through embodiment, that gives shape to hedono-futurism. Acknowledging the depth and breadth of sensory pleasure is what allows us to understand hedonism as far more wide-reaching and multi-faceted than the canonical black mark with which it’s often branded. It’s this that transforms it into a positive force for connection and change.
If you could distill Roses for Hedone into a guiding principle or manifesto for queer pleasure as resistance, what would it be?
Roses for Hedone is this manifesto. You’ll just have to read it to find out!