Virginia Inman
Virginia Inman | |
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| Born | 15 January 1960 |
| Alma mater | Anca Déuréy University |
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| Website | http://www.thevirginiainformer.gls/ |
| Anarchism in Gylias |
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Virginia Inman (born 15 January 1960) is a Gylian writer, journalist, and media personality. She is known for writing mainly on subjects of market anarchism and socialised luxury.
Early life
Virginia was born on 15 January 1960 in Şenri, Envadra. Her father worked as an engineer, and her mother worked as an English professor. She is of Shalumite descent and a native English speaker. Although her pronunciation of her name would be transcribed in the Gylic alphabet as Virďinia Inmyn, she does not use a Gylic transcription and states she doesn't mind her name being read with spelling pronunciation.
Her parents named her after Virginia Gerstenfeld, whose writing they were fans of. She attended Anca Déuréy University, where she had the opportunity to attend lectures by her namesake, and graduated with a degree in literature.
Career
Virginia began her career as a contributor for Radix, where she continues to appear. She jokes that she developed her persona as a "swaggering agorist" to amuse her colleagues at the magazine, since her political leanings stood out among her team. Her writing has also appeared in The Financial Monitor, Capital, L'Petit Écho, Silhouette, Downtown, Surface, and Gylias Review.
Books
She has written 4 books:
- The Future and Its Enemies (1998), which analyses society through the prism of a conflict between "dynamism" — a forward-looking and change-seeking philosophy that generally favors unregulated organization through spontaneous order — and "stasism" — a philosophy that favors top-down control and regulation and is marked by desire to maintain the status quo. She endorses "dynamism" and presents it as something to be embraced instead of feared.
- The Substance of Style (2003), which discusses the "aesthetic imperative" and argues that it is a vital component of a healthy, forward-looking society. It is the source of her famous quote, "Aesthetics has become too important to leave to the aesthetes."
- The Power of Glamour (2013), which discusses glamour as a "powerful form of nonverbal persuasion" and analyses its components and psychological influence.
- The Fabric of Civilisation (2020), which presents a global history of textiles and their impact on human society.
Politics
Virginia is a market anarchist, and names Lucretia Pecunia Mercator, Iana Rynai, and Ţaisa Eşal as her main influences. She argues for a society based on "emancipated markets" (such as existing community markets), cooperative ownership of resources, workers' self-management, and abolition of money.
She is a strong advocate of socialised luxury, the topic of The Substance of Style and The Power of Glamour, and considers the ideal the greatest achievement of the Golden Revolution. She supports coupling the ideal with that of degrowth, to achieve a steady-state economy in which luxury is treated as a public good, and common ownership of luxury goods prevents waste and environmental damage.
She has written on her blog, "I've sometimes been more critical of the left than I had to only because I agree with its goals, and have even less patience for ascetics and control freaks from them than I do in general (i.e. none). Give me aristerokratia over revolutionary sacrifices any day."
Other endeavours
Virginia is a frequent panellist on Gylian talk shows and has appeared as a guest commentator on various media outlets. Her blog, The Virginia In-former, is notable for being designed to look like a fictional newspaper — its name a takeoff on The Federal Informer and a pun on her name — and is one of Gylias' most popular political commentary blogs.
She has twice run for the presidency, both times being collectively endorsed by the Free and Voluntaryist Union, Rally for a Free Society, and Union of Independents. In 1991, she finished 6th with 10,2% of the first preference vote, and in 2010, she finished 3rd with 15,0% of the first preference vote.
Private life
She is married to an economist, and they reside in Velouria.
In 2006, she donated a kidney to a friend.
She was treated for breast cancer in 2009, using the experience as the basis for several articles about the importance of design aesthetics in hospitals, as well as one chapter of The Power of Glamour.