Showing papers by "Lauren Berlant published in 2012"

Affect in the End Times: A Conversation with Lauren Berlant

Abstract: Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, is renowned for her work on collective affect, sentimentality, fantasies of citizenship, and feminist and queer theory. In honor of her new book, Cruel Optimism, I asked her to help us make sense of a number of artifacts from the contemporary archive, all of which attempt to mark, in some way, the end of an era—historical, political, theoretical, or otherwise. What follows is a conversation that foregrounds not only the affective dimensions of the contemporary moment but also the circumscription of forms of togetherness by what she calls the “austere imaginary” of the American political sphere. Finally, it probes the question of what role affect theory might play in the re-imagination of social and political life.