Low Theory

Halberstam also shares a set of methodological assumptions with Berlant. Like Halberstam she 'mines' an archive of cultural texts (Halberstam calls his archive the 'silly archive' (a term also derived from Berlant), that are not analysed as cultural symptoms or that are used as examples, but that are embodiments of new sensibilities, new attitudes, different forms of being in the world. 

The book is a defence of what it provocatively calls 'low theory,' a mode of theorizing that Halberstam opposes to the disciplinary rigor of 'high theory.' The book uses sloppiness, silliness, tentativeness, as a strategy. 

Or rather: it is interested in those forms of knowledge that can only be expressed in a silly, non-serious mode.  Modes of knowing that Halberstam calls 'counter-intuitive.' Insights that cannot be expressed in any rigorous way. 

It is interested in the 'flash of insight' that an eruption into laughter may offer, which may be fleeting and unreliable, but it is also liberating. 

This mode of knowing differs from the traditional disciplinary operations of making objects and phenomena legible and classifiable. "Illegibility may in fact be one way of escaping the political manipulation to which all university fields and disciplines are are subject." (10) 

From Optimism to Failure..... A Small Step (2)

But there are other moments when the book implicitly refers to Cruel Optimism. 

For example: 'Embracing Failure' (which the book recommends) is described as a way of 'poking holes in the toxic positivity of contemporary life.'

This 'toxic positivity' - and its hysterical embrace of 'positive thinking' - is described as an 'American perversity.'

Halberstam evokes the specific temporality of this toxic positivity that recalls Berlant, i.e. the hope that this time things will be different: "Failure can stand in contrast with the scenarios of success that depend upon ‘trying and trying again..." (3) 

While success is defined as "reproductive maturity combined with wealth accumulation," failure,  is described as a way of 'being in the world,' - a queer way of being in the world - it opens to "ways of being and knowing that stand outside conventional understandings of success."  (2) 

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In short, Cruel Optimism is about straightness - or rather the desire to be straight, or the fantasy of straightness as something that is achievable. It is about straightness as something what we live as a form of 'persistence,' a grim holding on to a set of schemes, stories, expectations, and genres of living. 

Of course, one doesn't have to be heterosexual to be spooked by the fantasy of straightness, but the fantasy of straightness is, Halberstam reminds us, hetero at its core. It is, after all, a fantasy of 'reproductive maturity' 

Halberstam's queer embrace of failure, on the other hand seems - at least to me - surprisingly hetero-friendly. It's embrace of the immature, the infantile, the silly. 

From Optimism to Failure..... A small step (1)

The Queer Art of Failure struck me as a true companion piece to Cruel Optimism.  

One is a pessimistic book about optimism, while the other is a joyful book about failure; one is about a desperate, suffocating form of straightness, while the other embraces a happy form of queerness. 

While the book is not directly dedicated to Berlant, it very much reads as an ongoing dialogue with her and her work. And the acknowledgments to the book certainly seem to confirm this, when Halberstam suggests that the book is partly a product of the joy he experienced when listening to Berlant's summarising an episode of South Park. 

The Queer Art is, indeed, permeated with joy; it seems to be surfing on an an eruption of laughter that ripples through the book. 

One of the central points of the book is that laughter itself can be a starting point for theory. (In other words: it is a book about affect, but it also asks: which affects uphold a theoretical project?)

Reading Halberstam 1: How to talk about them?

Before we start: how do we speak about 'Halberstam'? I mean: how do we refer to the person?

Him / Her? Jack / Judith? They?

My proposal is to not worry too much about it.

Jack is programmatically sloppy about pronouns & first names, using both interchangeably: The Queer art of failure was published by Judith Halberstam, while Gaga Feminism (which came out more or less in the same year) was published by Jack Halberstam.

In a blogpost (that you can find here) of 2012 he explains that this sloppiness captures 'the form that my gender takes nowadays... my floating gender pronouns capture well the refusal to resolve my gender ambiguity that has become a kind of identity for me..."

She continues to describe how he had also refused to 'transition' completely: "I prefer not to clarify what must categorically remain murky. I prefer not to help people out in their gender quandaries and yet, I appreciate you asking."

The blogpost concludes with "... consider my gender improvised at best, uncertain and mispronounced more often than not, irresolvable and ever shifting."

So, in the spirit of this post I want to propose to improvise & use whatever pronouns we feel ok with.

Interview

Berlant in the New Yorker

A long an interesting New Yorker profile of Lauren Berlant can be found here.

Hi y'all (Relaunch)

Hi y'all,

This will be our multilingual blog on OPTIMISM! FAILURE! CARE!

Our hope is that it will function as a discussion forum / notebook in which you can post thoughts, remarks & free associations that are evoked by our readings.

Please feel free to write in a language that you feel comfortable in and do not hesitate to respond to each other's posts!

All best,

Pepita and Yasco