Cruel Optimism

Lauren Berlant

Published by Duke University Press 2011

Cruel Optimism

Lauren Berlant

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822394716

Overview
Contents

About this book

Ties together political economy and affect in a time of decreased expectations.

Author / Editor information

Lauren Berlant is George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture and The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, both also published by Duke University Press, as well as The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life. She the editor of the books Intimacy; Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion; and (with Lisa Duggan) Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and National Interest.

Reviews

“Cruel Optimism, Lauren Berlant’s brilliant new book, lays bare the price of our habitual ways of thinking about subjectivity, temporality, affect, attachment, and political investment. Exploring the condition of precarity that mocks the good life (or at least the better life) that hard work and good behavior are supposed to make possible within liberal democracy, Berlant’s bold analyses of the impasse of the present and her unflinching determination to follow a thought to its necessary end make clear why this is a crucial, indeed a necessary, book at this moment—and also why it will inform our critical discourse for years to come.”—Lee Edelman, author of No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive

“Lauren Berlant elegantly weaves together readings of contemporary art, literature, and film to reveal how our persistent aspirations for the good life are continually thwarted. Reading this book is an exciting theoretical experience but it also has a very practical, immediate, everyday quality. Berlant gives us something like a how-to guide for living in the impasse, that is, the affective and political conditions of our present.”—Michael Hardt, co-author of Commonwealth

“This brilliant book will be much read and much cited. Lauren Berlant is widely regarded as one of the most important and original critics of contemporary cultural logics. Here she offers a genuinely new angle on familiar processes through her subtle yet forceful reading of cruel optimism, the psychic and structural dynamics that keep people proximate to objects, fantasies, and worlds that seem to diminish them.”—Sara Ahmed, author of The Promise of Happiness

-- Caitlin Hu Bitch

-- Chase Dimock Lambda Literary Review

-- Anna E. Ward New Formations

-- Kate Clinton Progressive

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Affect in the Present Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
One. Cruel Optimism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
Two. Intuitionists: History and the Affective Event Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
Three. Slow Death (Obesity, Sovereignty, Lateral Agency) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
Four. Two Girls, Fat and Thin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
Five. Nearly Utopian, Nearly Normal: Post- Fordist Affect in La Promesse and Rosetta Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Six. After the Good Life, an Impasse: Time Out, Human Resources, and the Precarious Present Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Seven. On the Desire for the Political Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Note on the Cover Image: If Body: Riva and Zora in Middle Age Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	327

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 352
Illustrations
- Other: 58 illustrations

eBook

Published: October 27, 2011
ISBN: 9780822394716