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girlpdf's review against another edition
3.5
did nobody edit this????? 50% of these sentences needed to be SLICED dear god…….. nobody needs twelve commas in one sentence USE A FULL STOP LEE!!!!!!!!!!
i like the fuck you of it all. some of the analysis excited me when i read it as metaphorical, but i think he didn't mean it metaphorically and that kind of scares me. but also it's good to be scared. idk i need a reading group
i'm excited to read cruising utopia to see if munoz can tell me what i think about edelman. i just need someone else to clarify to me why i feel not great about some of this stuff
i like the fuck you of it all. some of the analysis excited me when i read it as metaphorical, but i think he didn't mean it metaphorically and that kind of scares me. but also it's good to be scared. idk i need a reading group
i'm excited to read cruising utopia to see if munoz can tell me what i think about edelman. i just need someone else to clarify to me why i feel not great about some of this stuff
versfobia's review against another edition
2.0
La tesis de No Future es que la homosexualidad (usada como sinécdoque de todas las identidades no cisheterosexuales) no debe ser normalizada como una alternativa de sexualidad entre otras sino preservar su estatus de exceso destructor que amenaza el orden heterosexual reinante. A través de un marco teórico lacaniano, por momentos zizekiano, emplea una serie de nociones (sinthome/sinthomosexuality, pulsión de muerte, Real-simbólico-imaginario) para buscar definir esta potencialidad revolucionaria en-sí de la homosexualidad.
Edelman se encuentra firmemente dentro de una perspectiva postestructuralista, cercana a la deconstrucción, por lo tanto antiesencialista. El rechazo de la sutura biologicista de las identidades, por ejemplo, es explícito. Sin embargo, el concepto mismo de la homosexualidad qua pulsión de muerte está marcadamente infrateorizado y sus consecuencias, tanto ontológicas como ético-políticas, son consideradas muy pobremente.
¿Qué quiere decir que la (sint)homosexualidad debe rechazar estructurarse en torno a las categorías simbólicas del mundo heterosexual? En términos específicos, ¿qué hacer?
El principal planteo del libro es el rechazo a la figura del Niño (Child) como un significante que estructura en torno a sí una futurización que se constituye como reproducción del orden social existente. Sin embargo, para Edelman toda política es en sí misma futurización. En consecuencia, el rechazo es a la política (aunque no a lo político). Pero ¿cómo se expresa esa existencia puramente antagónica que la homosexualidad debe tomar para sí?
Aquello que en una sociedad existe como pura negatividad queda, finalmente, fuera de la vida. Por eso Edelman llama a identificarse con la pulsión de muerte. No sorprende que el libro sea de 2004: la crisis del SIDA es lo suficientemente cercana y lo suficuentemente lejana. Y, en un punto, ¿no expresa ella el Acontecimiento edelmaniano por antonomasia: la homosexualidad convertida en masas de cadáveres demostrando la imposibilidad de la Sociedad como todo articulado, sin resto?
Al fin y al cabo, el problema de Edelman es el mismo de muchos otros: prescribe y describe a la vez. Si la homosexualidad fuera efectivamente pura negatividad, no habría falta insistir en que debe serlo. Su negativa a la normalización es, por un lado, políticamente peligrosa: como señala Zizek en Menos que nada, se articula con la postura homofóbica de que no debe permitirse adoptar a las parejas homosexuales. Y, en términos más generales, no queda claro cómo se expresa materialmente la filosofía política manifestada en No Future. Falta de materialismo, ahí el problema.
Pero, por otro lado, yo sostendría que esta negativa es ontológicamente errada. Nada puede escapar a la normalización. Lo simbólico penetra constantemente lo Real tanto como lo Real resiste constantemente su subsunción en lo simbólico. Toda la filosofía posestructuralista (Kristeva, Castoriadis, Derrida, incluso Deleuze) dan cuenta de ello. Es imposible persistir como pura negatividad. Tan imposible como negar totalmente la negatividad y arribar a un Todo positivo.
Finalmente: lo radical del planteo teórico y la elaboración de algunas ideas muy interesantes podrían hacer de este un texto relevante, más allá de lo expresado arriba. Pero casi la totalidad del libro consiste en análisis seudo-zizekianos de películas de Hitchcock cuya conexión con el argumento filosófico es endeble. Si se quitaran ellas, el trabajo no llegaría a las 20 páginas.
Edelman se encuentra firmemente dentro de una perspectiva postestructuralista, cercana a la deconstrucción, por lo tanto antiesencialista. El rechazo de la sutura biologicista de las identidades, por ejemplo, es explícito. Sin embargo, el concepto mismo de la homosexualidad qua pulsión de muerte está marcadamente infrateorizado y sus consecuencias, tanto ontológicas como ético-políticas, son consideradas muy pobremente.
¿Qué quiere decir que la (sint)homosexualidad debe rechazar estructurarse en torno a las categorías simbólicas del mundo heterosexual? En términos específicos, ¿qué hacer?
El principal planteo del libro es el rechazo a la figura del Niño (Child) como un significante que estructura en torno a sí una futurización que se constituye como reproducción del orden social existente. Sin embargo, para Edelman toda política es en sí misma futurización. En consecuencia, el rechazo es a la política (aunque no a lo político). Pero ¿cómo se expresa esa existencia puramente antagónica que la homosexualidad debe tomar para sí?
Aquello que en una sociedad existe como pura negatividad queda, finalmente, fuera de la vida. Por eso Edelman llama a identificarse con la pulsión de muerte. No sorprende que el libro sea de 2004: la crisis del SIDA es lo suficientemente cercana y lo suficuentemente lejana. Y, en un punto, ¿no expresa ella el Acontecimiento edelmaniano por antonomasia: la homosexualidad convertida en masas de cadáveres demostrando la imposibilidad de la Sociedad como todo articulado, sin resto?
Al fin y al cabo, el problema de Edelman es el mismo de muchos otros: prescribe y describe a la vez. Si la homosexualidad fuera efectivamente pura negatividad, no habría falta insistir en que debe serlo. Su negativa a la normalización es, por un lado, políticamente peligrosa: como señala Zizek en Menos que nada, se articula con la postura homofóbica de que no debe permitirse adoptar a las parejas homosexuales. Y, en términos más generales, no queda claro cómo se expresa materialmente la filosofía política manifestada en No Future. Falta de materialismo, ahí el problema.
Pero, por otro lado, yo sostendría que esta negativa es ontológicamente errada. Nada puede escapar a la normalización. Lo simbólico penetra constantemente lo Real tanto como lo Real resiste constantemente su subsunción en lo simbólico. Toda la filosofía posestructuralista (Kristeva, Castoriadis, Derrida, incluso Deleuze) dan cuenta de ello. Es imposible persistir como pura negatividad. Tan imposible como negar totalmente la negatividad y arribar a un Todo positivo.
Finalmente: lo radical del planteo teórico y la elaboración de algunas ideas muy interesantes podrían hacer de este un texto relevante, más allá de lo expresado arriba. Pero casi la totalidad del libro consiste en análisis seudo-zizekianos de películas de Hitchcock cuya conexión con el argumento filosófico es endeble. Si se quitaran ellas, el trabajo no llegaría a las 20 páginas.
milliecorkery's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
this destroyed my brain
jmbg's review against another edition
4.0
50/50 on Edelman's theory and application thereof. Extra .5 star for the 'fuck the social order...' monologue on page 29.
jenna0010's review against another edition
2.0
Welp. Edelman's work is helpful in thinking about how the future is tied to the figure of the child, and how this relates to queerness and the death drive, but it is also very hard to get through all of the Lacan, Freud, and heavy jargon here. I also contend with the gap in Edelman's study in naming the whiteness of the future's child, in not addressing thoroughly questions of race. While I can see how pivotal Edelman's work is in thinking through notions of reproductive futurity, queer negativity and the antisocial, I am staying in my own questions about how to hold this, how to tug at it.
tdwightdavis's review against another edition
I had to read this book for a graduate course on queer theory and deliver a lecture on the contents. I read the book. We'll see how the lecture goes.
Edelman here offers a queer anti-ethic, a searing polemic against the construct of the Child which represents reproductive futurisms endless parody of the past. He makes his argument using in depth queer analyses of Dickens and Hitchcock. All of this sounds right up my alley for the most part.
But he also uses a lot of Lacan. And a lot of dense language. And I'm not afraid of dense language. I am a graduate student in theology, dense language is usually my jam. But Edelman's language was on a whole other level. And I don't think he believes in short sentences. So I don't think I am capable or qualified of giving a star rating to this book because I don't know that I understood it well enough to assign an arbitrary rating. This is definitely one I'll have to revisit at some point, probably after a crash course in Lacan and psychoanalysis.
Edelman here offers a queer anti-ethic, a searing polemic against the construct of the Child which represents reproductive futurisms endless parody of the past. He makes his argument using in depth queer analyses of Dickens and Hitchcock. All of this sounds right up my alley for the most part.
But he also uses a lot of Lacan. And a lot of dense language. And I'm not afraid of dense language. I am a graduate student in theology, dense language is usually my jam. But Edelman's language was on a whole other level. And I don't think he believes in short sentences. So I don't think I am capable or qualified of giving a star rating to this book because I don't know that I understood it well enough to assign an arbitrary rating. This is definitely one I'll have to revisit at some point, probably after a crash course in Lacan and psychoanalysis.
ostrowk's review against another edition
4.0
NO FUTURE was infuriatingly smart, compelling, and fun in its analysis—even if I disagreed with its conclusions. Like the queer readings of Scrooge and The Birds were dumb good, as were the critiques of Cornel West and Dan Savage.
But OK, one reviewer notes that "Edelman grounds a queer ethics and politics outside kinship and reproductive circuits, those spaces of assimilation that use the bribe of futurity to distract us from the ongoing work of social violence and death." OK, I appreciate this. But Edelman goes so far in his anti-sociality as to reject the call to be "good citizens" and "activists," so even if we aren't distracted and fully "notice this ongoing work of social violence and death," what would Edelman have us do about it? Just go on fucking while the world burns—which it is, of course, in every literal and figurative way.
But OK, one reviewer notes that "Edelman grounds a queer ethics and politics outside kinship and reproductive circuits, those spaces of assimilation that use the bribe of futurity to distract us from the ongoing work of social violence and death." OK, I appreciate this. But Edelman goes so far in his anti-sociality as to reject the call to be "good citizens" and "activists," so even if we aren't distracted and fully "notice this ongoing work of social violence and death," what would Edelman have us do about it? Just go on fucking while the world burns—which it is, of course, in every literal and figurative way.
chaseledin's review against another edition
Lee Edelman's oft-cited No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004) is a scholarly polemic that attempts to confront the prevalence of "the Child" in American politics. Edelman employs a long tradition of psychoanalytic and literary analysis to assert how the future is merely an aspirational--that is, a conservative--politic that knows in advance what the future holds: heterosexual reproduction. Specifically, Edelman argues that both the Right and the Left seek a "safe" and "agreeable" time/place in which "the Child" (an amorphous figure that embodies the life and death of the human or, using psychoanalytic terms, human attempts to employ the Symbolic to approach the Real) inevitably emerges regardless of which side you take in democracy.
Alas Edelman's erudition is often endless, with page-length paragraphs (or longer) and complex intellectual conversations that require significant investment in philosophical traditions of the 20th century. This writing style made it extraordinarily difficult to access his argument with clarity. I found the second chapter, "Sinthomosexuality" most useful, following my training in literary studies and gay/lesbian studies. Yet, his attempt to locate an abject theory (aka a way to occupy queerness in spite of reproductive futurism) felt bogged in a mirror-focused monologue. His writing style makes it difficult for readers outside of the academy to keep up; thus the reader might be left wondering whether the polemic accomplishes its aims.
Edelman's text is an important part of queer theory from the early 2000s, since it kicks off the critical temporality strand. As is clear from works from Heather Love (2007), Elizabeth Freeman (2010), Alexis Lothian (2018), and others, the text is, itself, a relic of a particular form of reproductive politics. While we continue to struggle for women's rights, abortion rights, and a de-centralisation of "the family" in American politics, this book lends a dated analysis to the many non-reproductive movements taking place in American society today. My suggestion: read the first two chapters of Edelman's text with great interest; the rest are case studies and merely seek to exemplify the position of the Child.
Alas Edelman's erudition is often endless, with page-length paragraphs (or longer) and complex intellectual conversations that require significant investment in philosophical traditions of the 20th century. This writing style made it extraordinarily difficult to access his argument with clarity. I found the second chapter, "Sinthomosexuality" most useful, following my training in literary studies and gay/lesbian studies. Yet, his attempt to locate an abject theory (aka a way to occupy queerness in spite of reproductive futurism) felt bogged in a mirror-focused monologue. His writing style makes it difficult for readers outside of the academy to keep up; thus the reader might be left wondering whether the polemic accomplishes its aims.
Edelman's text is an important part of queer theory from the early 2000s, since it kicks off the critical temporality strand. As is clear from works from Heather Love (2007), Elizabeth Freeman (2010), Alexis Lothian (2018), and others, the text is, itself, a relic of a particular form of reproductive politics. While we continue to struggle for women's rights, abortion rights, and a de-centralisation of "the family" in American politics, this book lends a dated analysis to the many non-reproductive movements taking place in American society today. My suggestion: read the first two chapters of Edelman's text with great interest; the rest are case studies and merely seek to exemplify the position of the Child.
theovengan's review
challenging
informative
slow-paced
1.5
'That figural Child alone embodies the citizen as an ideal, entitled to claim full rights to its future share in the nation's good, though always at the cost of limiting the rights "real" citizens are allowed.'