British election nights have followed a certain pattern for decades. The polling stations close at 10 p.m. The ballot boxes are delivered to municipal sports halls across the country, where local government employees count the votes through the night, before … Continue reading “British Election Nights, Despair, and Hope: A Personal History”
1. On Genre Flailing In a crisis we engage in genre flailing so that we don’t fall through the cracks of knowledge and noise into suicide or psychosis. In a crisis we improvise like crazy, where “like crazy” is a … Continue reading “Big Man”
A PhD does not prepare you for a school shooting. My students are afraid. We are afraid. It’s been almost a week since the tragedy in Isla Vista. A student came into my office Tuesday saying, “Professor, you look hella … Continue reading “Week One: Fear in the Shadow of Violence”
Teaching “Sex in Public” (1998) a few months ago while in the middle of reading Cruel Optimism, I was struck anew by the moment when Berlant and Warner confront Biddy Martin’s critique of an aversion to the ordinary in … Continue reading “On Cruel Optimism”
There are many things lost in the naming of a death as a “gay youth suicide.” I want to focus on two aspects of this naming: one, what is contained in the category of sexuality and two, what … Continue reading “Ecologies of Sex, Sensation, and Slow Death”
“So many scholars read anxiously, with a hope not to learn, not to be discomposed by learning. They fish in indexes looking for confirmation of not being trumped, they skim the surface hoping that no phrase catches them. The aversion … Continue reading “A Teaching (I) and (II)”
