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No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive
In this searing polemic, Lee Edelman outlines a radically uncompromising new ethics of queer theory. His main target is the all-pervasive figure of the child, which he reads as the linchpin of our universal politics of “reproductive futurism.” Edelman argues that the child, understood as innocence in need of protection, represents the possibility of the future against which the queer is positioned as the embodiment of a relentlessly narcissistic, antisocial, and future-negating drive. He boldly insists that the efficacy of queerness lies in its very willingness to embrace this refusal of the social and political order. In No Future, Edelman urges queers to abandon the stance of accommodation and accede to their status as figures for the force of a negativity that he links with irony, jouissance, and, ultimately, the death drive itself.
Closely engaging with literary texts, Edelman makes a compelling case for imagining Scrooge without Tiny Tim and Silas Marner without little Eppie. Looking to Alfred Hitchcock’s films, he embraces two of the director’s most notorious creations: the sadistic Leonard of North by Northwest, who steps on the hand that holds the couple precariously above the abyss, and the terrifying title figures of The Birds, with their predilection for children. Edelman enlarges the reach of contemporary psychoanalytic theory as he brings it to bear not only on works of literature and film but also on such current political flashpoints as gay marriage and gay parenting. Throwing down the theoretical gauntlet, No Future reimagines queerness with a passion certain to spark an equally impassioned debate among its readers.
Closely engaging with literary texts, Edelman makes a compelling case for imagining Scrooge without Tiny Tim and Silas Marner without little Eppie. Looking to Alfred Hitchcock’s films, he embraces two of the director’s most notorious creations: the sadistic Leonard of North by Northwest, who steps on the hand that holds the couple precariously above the abyss, and the terrifying title figures of The Birds, with their predilection for children. Edelman enlarges the reach of contemporary psychoanalytic theory as he brings it to bear not only on works of literature and film but also on such current political flashpoints as gay marriage and gay parenting. Throwing down the theoretical gauntlet, No Future reimagines queerness with a passion certain to spark an equally impassioned debate among its readers.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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About the author
Lee Edelman
11 books77 followersLee Edelman is a professor and chair of the English Department at Tufts University. Lee Edelman began his academic career as a scholar of twentieth-century American poetry. He has since become a central figure in the development, dissemination, and rethinking of queer theory. His current work explores the intersections of sexuality, rhetorical theory, cultural politics, and film. He holds an appointment as the Fletcher Professor of English Literature and he is currently the Chair of the English Department. He gained international recognition for his books about queer theory, post-structuralism, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural studies.
Leo Bersani wrote of his most recent book, No Future, "In consistently brilliant theoretical discussions (for the most part, psychoanalytically inspired), as well as in strikingly original readings of Dickens, George Eliot, and Hitchcock, Lee Edelman argues that in a political culture dominated by the sentimental illusions and frequently murderous moral imperatives of 'reproductive futurism, ' homosexuality has been assigned—and should deliberately and defiantly take on—the burden of a negativity at once embedded within and violently disavowed by that culture. The paradoxical dignity of queerness would be its refusal to believe in a redemptive future, its embrace of the unintelligibility, even the inhumanity inherent in sexuality. Edelman's extraordinary text is so powerful that we could perhaps reproach him only for not spelling out the mode in which we might survive our necessary assent to his argument."
Leo Bersani wrote of his most recent book, No Future, "In consistently brilliant theoretical discussions (for the most part, psychoanalytically inspired), as well as in strikingly original readings of Dickens, George Eliot, and Hitchcock, Lee Edelman argues that in a political culture dominated by the sentimental illusions and frequently murderous moral imperatives of 'reproductive futurism, ' homosexuality has been assigned—and should deliberately and defiantly take on—the burden of a negativity at once embedded within and violently disavowed by that culture. The paradoxical dignity of queerness would be its refusal to believe in a redemptive future, its embrace of the unintelligibility, even the inhumanity inherent in sexuality. Edelman's extraordinary text is so powerful that we could perhaps reproach him only for not spelling out the mode in which we might survive our necessary assent to his argument."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 137 reviews
September 7, 2018
This was one of the worst books of queer theory I have ever read. It manages to talk about queer theory without talking about ANY real queers! It analyzes Hitchcock films and talks (densely) about how gay people pose a symbolic threat to society because they don't breed.
Except that gay people do breed. Bisexual people have kids all the time with different gendered partners. Trans men get pregnant and trans women donate sperm. One in three lesbian couples have kids, and one in six gay couples do as well. He's theorizing about a phenomena that has NO basis in reality. Reality undoes his entire theory. And while the author clearly enjoys patting himself on the back for his 'radical' theory, it's not very radical at all. It's just upholding the same cissexist and monosexist ideology, then putting the word 'queer' on the front of the book. Any queer theory that doesn't talk about half the letters in the LGBT acronym is weak sauce as far as I'm concerned.
I do NOT recommend this to anyone, except maybe people who enjoy intellectual masturbation or weird theories about Hitchcock films. To put it one way, I got this book for free and still felt ripped off.
Except that gay people do breed. Bisexual people have kids all the time with different gendered partners. Trans men get pregnant and trans women donate sperm. One in three lesbian couples have kids, and one in six gay couples do as well. He's theorizing about a phenomena that has NO basis in reality. Reality undoes his entire theory. And while the author clearly enjoys patting himself on the back for his 'radical' theory, it's not very radical at all. It's just upholding the same cissexist and monosexist ideology, then putting the word 'queer' on the front of the book. Any queer theory that doesn't talk about half the letters in the LGBT acronym is weak sauce as far as I'm concerned.
I do NOT recommend this to anyone, except maybe people who enjoy intellectual masturbation or weird theories about Hitchcock films. To put it one way, I got this book for free and still felt ripped off.
July 31, 2015
It is interesting to read the comments on this book. It seems that on the one hand there are people who have no idea what he is talking about and are critiquing the book on an entirely different plane than it operates. On the other hand there is a way to read the book un-critically that leads to pretty banal conclusions (being a gym-bunny or circuit queen or something). The book is enjoyable in a lot of senses, but kind of in spite of itself. For anyone interested in reading this, I'd recommend instead reading Guy Hocquenghem ("Homosexual Desire") and Walter Benjamin ("On the Concept of History"), from whom he mercilessly plagiarized the only worthwhile ideas in the book. Also, contrary to what some commenters have said, the puns are terrible (particularly the one about "soles" and "souls"). kill me. no future.
June 13, 2011
Sounds way too much like a bouggie gay white man who simply hates children. And the figure of the child edelman contends with is always always white: his 'theory' cannot account for the signs emitted by the child of difference - he has nothing to say, for instance, about what the black child may signify, let alone a queer/non-normative/differently abled/'foreign' child ... not all children signify the future in the same way ...
March 24, 2016
"Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we're collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital ls and with small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop."
Lee Edelman's text has been described (on the back of the book, no less) as a "searing polemic," and it certainly is that. But, it is not as if Edelman offers here some sort of positivist argument for how one should lived based on statistic analysis or an argument that claims any kind of moral authority. Instead, what No Future suggests is something outside the statistics that produce mandates of "tolerance" and outside the ethical. These notions are both, in Edelman's view, things that belong purely to the Lacanian Symbolic order. Instead, Edelman dismantles (but not in the deconstructive sense). He dismantles the notion of futurity, the logic of meaning which underpin the feeling of perpetual forward motion, and upends the relegation of queer bodies as receptacles for the unintelligible (death) drive that the social order can't admit into its "empire of meaning."
In compelling readings of Dickens, Eliot, and Hitchcock, Edelman elucidates the inherent impossibility of a social order that allows for the joyous coexistence of all. Instead, what is exposed is the need to excise the death drive, jouissance, and the Lacanian Real that the social order will always engage in. In this excision, a bodies must fall to the wayside of social intelligibility. In our current moment, among those bodies (but, to be sure, one among many excised categories burdened with the excess for which the Symbolic cannot account) are those marked or self-described as "queer." Edelman's claim, then, is to embrace the insurgent potential, the volatility, the explosiveness of the queer's exclusion from the social order and use it to "resist," but only in the sense of an utter negation of life, futurity, and figural Child rather than in the binaristic logic of opposition that resistance is expressed as within the Symbolic. Edelman writes, "Rather than expanding the reach of the human ... we might ... insist on enlarging the human instead—or enlarging what, in its excess, in its unintelligibility, exposes the human itself as always misrecognized catachresis, a positing blind to the willful violence that marks its imposition."
The text of Edelman's task is a difficult one, but the task of reading his prose is markedly less so. Edelman seems to pride himself in clever turns of phrase which perhaps might border on a little much at times. One can see the wily face of the author giving a wink to the reader reading through the numerous metaphors, allusions, and references to ideas of "stepping," and "shoes" cohering around the reading of Leonard's stepping on the hand of Thornhill in Hitchcock's North by Northwest or the same frequency of reference, in the form of quirky expressions about birds and flight, when Edelman engages with The Birds. Edelman's "cute" linguistic tricks only occasionally enhance the force of his argumentation, but they are window-dressing at their worst. Still, they're a fascinating stylistic and rhetorical choice and one which deserves more comprehensive analysis.
Edelman's No Future is a resounding success and has every bit earned its legacy as a seminal text of modern queer theory. Those who attempt to sublimate queer theory under the banner of gender studies or (more laughably) affect theory find a considerable barrier to such a misguided goal in the considerations of this text. Beyond it all, what is queer is the effacing of futurity, the decentralizing of the Child, and to revel in the mechanistic functions that can generate sexual pleasure. Edelman does not seek to free "subjects" from the Symbolic order, but rather seeks to suggest that binarisms of freedom and unfreedom are not sufficiently descriptive of the conditions of human bodies and the discursive detritus some are forced to carry. And, indeed, Edelman ultimately suggests that to be a "subject," that is to say to be a participant in and legible to the social and Symbolic order, is not a desirable position.
Lee Edelman's text has been described (on the back of the book, no less) as a "searing polemic," and it certainly is that. But, it is not as if Edelman offers here some sort of positivist argument for how one should lived based on statistic analysis or an argument that claims any kind of moral authority. Instead, what No Future suggests is something outside the statistics that produce mandates of "tolerance" and outside the ethical. These notions are both, in Edelman's view, things that belong purely to the Lacanian Symbolic order. Instead, Edelman dismantles (but not in the deconstructive sense). He dismantles the notion of futurity, the logic of meaning which underpin the feeling of perpetual forward motion, and upends the relegation of queer bodies as receptacles for the unintelligible (death) drive that the social order can't admit into its "empire of meaning."
In compelling readings of Dickens, Eliot, and Hitchcock, Edelman elucidates the inherent impossibility of a social order that allows for the joyous coexistence of all. Instead, what is exposed is the need to excise the death drive, jouissance, and the Lacanian Real that the social order will always engage in. In this excision, a bodies must fall to the wayside of social intelligibility. In our current moment, among those bodies (but, to be sure, one among many excised categories burdened with the excess for which the Symbolic cannot account) are those marked or self-described as "queer." Edelman's claim, then, is to embrace the insurgent potential, the volatility, the explosiveness of the queer's exclusion from the social order and use it to "resist," but only in the sense of an utter negation of life, futurity, and figural Child rather than in the binaristic logic of opposition that resistance is expressed as within the Symbolic. Edelman writes, "Rather than expanding the reach of the human ... we might ... insist on enlarging the human instead—or enlarging what, in its excess, in its unintelligibility, exposes the human itself as always misrecognized catachresis, a positing blind to the willful violence that marks its imposition."
The text of Edelman's task is a difficult one, but the task of reading his prose is markedly less so. Edelman seems to pride himself in clever turns of phrase which perhaps might border on a little much at times. One can see the wily face of the author giving a wink to the reader reading through the numerous metaphors, allusions, and references to ideas of "stepping," and "shoes" cohering around the reading of Leonard's stepping on the hand of Thornhill in Hitchcock's North by Northwest or the same frequency of reference, in the form of quirky expressions about birds and flight, when Edelman engages with The Birds. Edelman's "cute" linguistic tricks only occasionally enhance the force of his argumentation, but they are window-dressing at their worst. Still, they're a fascinating stylistic and rhetorical choice and one which deserves more comprehensive analysis.
Edelman's No Future is a resounding success and has every bit earned its legacy as a seminal text of modern queer theory. Those who attempt to sublimate queer theory under the banner of gender studies or (more laughably) affect theory find a considerable barrier to such a misguided goal in the considerations of this text. Beyond it all, what is queer is the effacing of futurity, the decentralizing of the Child, and to revel in the mechanistic functions that can generate sexual pleasure. Edelman does not seek to free "subjects" from the Symbolic order, but rather seeks to suggest that binarisms of freedom and unfreedom are not sufficiently descriptive of the conditions of human bodies and the discursive detritus some are forced to carry. And, indeed, Edelman ultimately suggests that to be a "subject," that is to say to be a participant in and legible to the social and Symbolic order, is not a desirable position.
February 26, 2009
This pretensious constipation of lit theory was assigned to compliment our reading of Macbeth. For our weekly written reflection I once again stuck with one of my outlandish in-class conjectures -- the “Macbeth is impotent” hypothesis -- but only because I felt encouraged by Dr. Lee “Run-on-Sentences-Don’t-Apply-to-Me” Edelman and his preoccupations with reproductive imperatives and death drives:
If Edelman’s theory is to be believed, our political model is essentially conservative in that it affirms and sustains our current social design, justifying this with the icon of the hypothetical future Child. We can vaguely equate his proposal to dissolve politics with the atheistic imperative to renounce the concept of heaven: afterlife and unborn generations are used in the same way to suppress the exigency, the potential, and the singular reality of life on earth. Both atheism and Edelman’s definition of queerness argue the present life as the only meaningful reality, and propose that any construction of meaning or reality outside of it is intentionally displaced so as to control/limit individual and collective puissance, i.e., to negate revolution or fundamental change.
So, the reason I’m dragging religion and politics into the mud pit together is because Macbeth’s infanticidal spree MUST be compared with the Biblical lore of King Herod in the Gospel of Matthew, commonly known as the Massacre of the Innocents. For those less fortunate than I who were not inundated with early morning scripture study, here’s the breakdown: King Herod, elected (by Roman Senate) “King of the Jews,” was reigning in Jerusalem where he was becoming increasingly paranoid about the stability of his position. After a few assassination attempts and the clamoring of Pharisees (who foretold of Jesus, AKA the new King of Jews), he was paranoid enough to kill several of his own family members. His breakdown culminates with a passing visit from one of the wise men on the way to find baby Jesus – from him Herod hears about the new star and starts to panic. His sources say the new baby King of Jews would be in Bethlehem, so LOGICALLY he orders all baby boys (two years or younger) slaughtered in Bethlehem! (Spoiler: an angel warned Joseph so they left town early.)
The parallels to Macbeth are fairly obvious – here we have a king (in a monarchal system not based solely on hereditary privilege) facing his possible succession. So attached is he to his position of power, he counter-logically exterminates his own subjects, thereby killing individuals but also attempting to kill a future in which he is irrelevant. The irony of course is that with every individual subject he offs, he lessens his own power because his kingdom (and its (future) vitality) shrinks, and his political position becomes no more secure.
Does this connect with Macbeth’s lack of children and possible lack of potency? Well, I would argue that both Herod and Macbeth’s foreknowledge of their successor is what enflamed the otherwise typical but latent awareness of their inevitable mortality and eventual replacement. The inability to reproduce themselves may be normal, but having the details of who will be co-opting their lot is unbearable. It’s no coincidence that Macduff specifically points out that Macbeth “has no children” (4.3.217) when he hears of his own children’s slaughter – he is alluding to Macbeth’s uniquely perverse capacity to take innocent life, which is very different from a normal soldier’s combative instincts. This dark capability does not originate from an immediate concern for self-preservation (which would suggest a sense of self-importance or a belief in individual worth), but rather from a loathsome acknowledgment of his own meaninglessness (which, once realized and superimposed on others, makes murder pretty inconsequential and therefore facile).
Confronted with an imagined Child successor, Macbeth and Herod can no longer bear the fallacy of their pretended relevance in the scheme of futurity (eight kings down the line…). They become like the suicidal school shooters who, convinced they are going down, just want to pick off the projections of their ego’s failed projects – the people most likely enjoy in life that which they had squandered or were denied.
If Edelman’s theory is to be believed, our political model is essentially conservative in that it affirms and sustains our current social design, justifying this with the icon of the hypothetical future Child. We can vaguely equate his proposal to dissolve politics with the atheistic imperative to renounce the concept of heaven: afterlife and unborn generations are used in the same way to suppress the exigency, the potential, and the singular reality of life on earth. Both atheism and Edelman’s definition of queerness argue the present life as the only meaningful reality, and propose that any construction of meaning or reality outside of it is intentionally displaced so as to control/limit individual and collective puissance, i.e., to negate revolution or fundamental change.
So, the reason I’m dragging religion and politics into the mud pit together is because Macbeth’s infanticidal spree MUST be compared with the Biblical lore of King Herod in the Gospel of Matthew, commonly known as the Massacre of the Innocents. For those less fortunate than I who were not inundated with early morning scripture study, here’s the breakdown: King Herod, elected (by Roman Senate) “King of the Jews,” was reigning in Jerusalem where he was becoming increasingly paranoid about the stability of his position. After a few assassination attempts and the clamoring of Pharisees (who foretold of Jesus, AKA the new King of Jews), he was paranoid enough to kill several of his own family members. His breakdown culminates with a passing visit from one of the wise men on the way to find baby Jesus – from him Herod hears about the new star and starts to panic. His sources say the new baby King of Jews would be in Bethlehem, so LOGICALLY he orders all baby boys (two years or younger) slaughtered in Bethlehem! (Spoiler: an angel warned Joseph so they left town early.)
The parallels to Macbeth are fairly obvious – here we have a king (in a monarchal system not based solely on hereditary privilege) facing his possible succession. So attached is he to his position of power, he counter-logically exterminates his own subjects, thereby killing individuals but also attempting to kill a future in which he is irrelevant. The irony of course is that with every individual subject he offs, he lessens his own power because his kingdom (and its (future) vitality) shrinks, and his political position becomes no more secure.
Does this connect with Macbeth’s lack of children and possible lack of potency? Well, I would argue that both Herod and Macbeth’s foreknowledge of their successor is what enflamed the otherwise typical but latent awareness of their inevitable mortality and eventual replacement. The inability to reproduce themselves may be normal, but having the details of who will be co-opting their lot is unbearable. It’s no coincidence that Macduff specifically points out that Macbeth “has no children” (4.3.217) when he hears of his own children’s slaughter – he is alluding to Macbeth’s uniquely perverse capacity to take innocent life, which is very different from a normal soldier’s combative instincts. This dark capability does not originate from an immediate concern for self-preservation (which would suggest a sense of self-importance or a belief in individual worth), but rather from a loathsome acknowledgment of his own meaninglessness (which, once realized and superimposed on others, makes murder pretty inconsequential and therefore facile).
Confronted with an imagined Child successor, Macbeth and Herod can no longer bear the fallacy of their pretended relevance in the scheme of futurity (eight kings down the line…). They become like the suicidal school shooters who, convinced they are going down, just want to pick off the projections of their ego’s failed projects – the people most likely enjoy in life that which they had squandered or were denied.
March 3, 2012
This was kind of less out-there than I was expecting. A lot of reviewers seem to think that Edelman hates children or something, which I don't think is the case; I interpreted his thesis as saying that the figure of the Child for whom the future must be preserved has its problems. I also think he spends a bit too much time on Hitchcock, and I would have liked to see him address the fairly recent mainstreaming of the queer family, particularly within the context of the debate over gay marriage and the rhetoric there (ie: "We're just like you..."). Despite its flaws, this is still an interesting book.
April 17, 2008
"Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we're collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital ls and with small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop."
May 4, 2017
1. this man's punnery is unparalleled
2. my anxiety disorder has begun speaking to me in the voice of lee edelman
3. the entire last chapter is about hitchcock's the birds im SCREAMING
2. my anxiety disorder has begun speaking to me in the voice of lee edelman
3. the entire last chapter is about hitchcock's the birds im SCREAMING
September 24, 2018
An amusing and certainly thought-provoking read, Lee Edelman's No Future gives us virtuosic queer readings of George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Alfred Hitchcock; unfortunately, in its grapplings with psychoanalysis, might I say it puts the "anal" in "psychoanalysis" and disappears up its own asshole.
Edelman successfully argues that the figure of the Child, this imaginary and most certainly white-skinned automaton "Child" figure, and all of the accompanying "won't somebody please think of the children?" is politically toxic and is weaponized against the queer community to villainize them as agents of meaningless sex, of pleasure without objective, and therefore not invested in the future. This is easily one of the most entertaining and cathartic components of the book; however, his remedy to combat this so-called reproductive futurism is what he labels with the portmanteau "sinthomosexuality," a mix of a Lacanian term sinthome, and well, you figured out the rest. The issue is that he imbues the sinthomosexual concept with a similar "figurative-ness," and also in the manufacturing of this figure, invests it in a sort of futuristic determination. Take this passage, with emphasis added:
"...But the sinthomosexual won't promise any transcendence or grant us a vision of something to come. In breaking our hold on the future, the sinthomosexual, himself neither martyr nor proponent of martyrdom for the sake of the cause, forsakes all causes, all social action, all responsibility for a better tomorrow or for the perfection of social forms." (101)
Edelman successfully avoids using the future tense for the rest of this paragraph, but the omission is painfully present and, by implication, deliberate. The transition to living under the principle of sinthomosexuality, as a theoretical remedy to the figurative Child's oppression, must not only be planned out, transitioned to, or executed, but it also carries with it a series of rules that must be doled out conditionally, as in, having a relationship with what will or won't be done in the future. The tension between the pragmatics of sinthomosexuality as an ethical decision is contradicted by a disavowal of the figurative Future wholesale. As a side note, I emphasized "himself" here because Edelman's used queerness as a surrogate for gay men, ostensibly. The most egregious omission here is a demonstrable case of bi erasure, probably because its execution and its existing queerness don't fit the model of an outright rejection of "reproductive futurism" as part of his manifesto of how queers ought to behave in a sinthomosexual fashion. In a weird way by virtue of omission, bisexuality is erased from Edelman's newfound ethics of the queer. So are lesbians who deserve some lip service as womb-bearers who can more outrightly reject the act of birthing as being the owners of the goddamned equipment.
Other reviewers on this site have accused Edelman of not being intersectional racially speaking, but I think there's a deliberate reason why the figurative Child Edelman refers to is a white boy. This has less to do with his bias specifically and more to do with a very real White Supremacist imagination (provided I'm assuming this book exists as a critique of American politics as one clearly preoccupied with the white boy child, or white boy fetus). So, on this, I will give him a pass. But Edelman is missing a key point from James Baldwin about the procreation of minority children as a radical act against a white supremacist system. In a system occupied with people fixated on the manufacture of the White Child, and also fixated on the destruction of both the literal and the figurative Black Body (and Black Child, may Tamir Rice rest in power), the idea of poor minority communities procreating is one of community resistance. What's interesting is that this act of procreation is absolutely a literal, in-practice strategy to resist the promulgation of the figurative White-Child as America's most prioritized political future. It combats white supremacy by not allowing for the extermination of that which is not white; by standing up and saying "Black Lives Matter," it is instigating a discussion and promoting a future that provides multiple options as to the color of this figurative Child. Not to mention that the shifting demographics of this country terrifies America down to its white supremacist DNA: people are horrified that the figurative Child, the majority Child, of the United States will no longer be white. This crucial component of the race discussion is omitted here, and was made decades before Edelman penned this polemic.
It is baffling to me as well to see someone as recently Edelman so clearly invested in the Freud mythos. This is not to say I find Lacan and Freud to be of a similar ilk necessarily, but that I find myself quite skeptical of psychoanalytics being a sufficiently solid foundation on which to lay a principle of ethics. I can't disprove Lacan one way or the other, but I do know that the shadow of Freud looms large over Hitchcock's body of work, and in some ways Hitchcock's films suffer from this now dated indebtedness to crackpot psychoanalysis and the now-comically absurd conclusions to which it arises. The book's investment in the inadequacy of language, the inadequacy of meaning, and the non-existence of the future also feel like over-elaborated reiterations of a sort of Westernized coupling of Buddhism and nihilism: being invested wholesale in the gratification of the present because of the worthlessness of an un-arrived, fascistically (for lack of a better word) predestined future does mix a sort-of mindfulness with the arrival of linguistics as an inherent meaninglessness that language itself captures. This is something the koan has grasped at for centuries upon centuries.
Overall, however, I still enjoyed Edelman's book, with his onslaught of both high-rent and low-rent puns; again, the queer readings of Silas Marner and A Christmas Carol alone are a worthwhile read, and while the North by Northwest analysis is a ton of cheeky fun, Edelman brilliantly gives signification to The Birds by arguing that they represent no future, no heuristic determination at all. As such, he rests comfortably on the paradox of meaning through meaninglessness, and that's a good thing. All of those parts are definitely great (and so is his surprisingly moving eulogy for Matthew Shepard) and worth the read.
Edelman successfully argues that the figure of the Child, this imaginary and most certainly white-skinned automaton "Child" figure, and all of the accompanying "won't somebody please think of the children?" is politically toxic and is weaponized against the queer community to villainize them as agents of meaningless sex, of pleasure without objective, and therefore not invested in the future. This is easily one of the most entertaining and cathartic components of the book; however, his remedy to combat this so-called reproductive futurism is what he labels with the portmanteau "sinthomosexuality," a mix of a Lacanian term sinthome, and well, you figured out the rest. The issue is that he imbues the sinthomosexual concept with a similar "figurative-ness," and also in the manufacturing of this figure, invests it in a sort of futuristic determination. Take this passage, with emphasis added:
"...But the sinthomosexual won't promise any transcendence or grant us a vision of something to come. In breaking our hold on the future, the sinthomosexual, himself neither martyr nor proponent of martyrdom for the sake of the cause, forsakes all causes, all social action, all responsibility for a better tomorrow or for the perfection of social forms." (101)
Edelman successfully avoids using the future tense for the rest of this paragraph, but the omission is painfully present and, by implication, deliberate. The transition to living under the principle of sinthomosexuality, as a theoretical remedy to the figurative Child's oppression, must not only be planned out, transitioned to, or executed, but it also carries with it a series of rules that must be doled out conditionally, as in, having a relationship with what will or won't be done in the future. The tension between the pragmatics of sinthomosexuality as an ethical decision is contradicted by a disavowal of the figurative Future wholesale. As a side note, I emphasized "himself" here because Edelman's used queerness as a surrogate for gay men, ostensibly. The most egregious omission here is a demonstrable case of bi erasure, probably because its execution and its existing queerness don't fit the model of an outright rejection of "reproductive futurism" as part of his manifesto of how queers ought to behave in a sinthomosexual fashion. In a weird way by virtue of omission, bisexuality is erased from Edelman's newfound ethics of the queer. So are lesbians who deserve some lip service as womb-bearers who can more outrightly reject the act of birthing as being the owners of the goddamned equipment.
Other reviewers on this site have accused Edelman of not being intersectional racially speaking, but I think there's a deliberate reason why the figurative Child Edelman refers to is a white boy. This has less to do with his bias specifically and more to do with a very real White Supremacist imagination (provided I'm assuming this book exists as a critique of American politics as one clearly preoccupied with the white boy child, or white boy fetus). So, on this, I will give him a pass. But Edelman is missing a key point from James Baldwin about the procreation of minority children as a radical act against a white supremacist system. In a system occupied with people fixated on the manufacture of the White Child, and also fixated on the destruction of both the literal and the figurative Black Body (and Black Child, may Tamir Rice rest in power), the idea of poor minority communities procreating is one of community resistance. What's interesting is that this act of procreation is absolutely a literal, in-practice strategy to resist the promulgation of the figurative White-Child as America's most prioritized political future. It combats white supremacy by not allowing for the extermination of that which is not white; by standing up and saying "Black Lives Matter," it is instigating a discussion and promoting a future that provides multiple options as to the color of this figurative Child. Not to mention that the shifting demographics of this country terrifies America down to its white supremacist DNA: people are horrified that the figurative Child, the majority Child, of the United States will no longer be white. This crucial component of the race discussion is omitted here, and was made decades before Edelman penned this polemic.
It is baffling to me as well to see someone as recently Edelman so clearly invested in the Freud mythos. This is not to say I find Lacan and Freud to be of a similar ilk necessarily, but that I find myself quite skeptical of psychoanalytics being a sufficiently solid foundation on which to lay a principle of ethics. I can't disprove Lacan one way or the other, but I do know that the shadow of Freud looms large over Hitchcock's body of work, and in some ways Hitchcock's films suffer from this now dated indebtedness to crackpot psychoanalysis and the now-comically absurd conclusions to which it arises. The book's investment in the inadequacy of language, the inadequacy of meaning, and the non-existence of the future also feel like over-elaborated reiterations of a sort of Westernized coupling of Buddhism and nihilism: being invested wholesale in the gratification of the present because of the worthlessness of an un-arrived, fascistically (for lack of a better word) predestined future does mix a sort-of mindfulness with the arrival of linguistics as an inherent meaninglessness that language itself captures. This is something the koan has grasped at for centuries upon centuries.
Overall, however, I still enjoyed Edelman's book, with his onslaught of both high-rent and low-rent puns; again, the queer readings of Silas Marner and A Christmas Carol alone are a worthwhile read, and while the North by Northwest analysis is a ton of cheeky fun, Edelman brilliantly gives signification to The Birds by arguing that they represent no future, no heuristic determination at all. As such, he rests comfortably on the paradox of meaning through meaninglessness, and that's a good thing. All of those parts are definitely great (and so is his surprisingly moving eulogy for Matthew Shepard) and worth the read.
May 21, 2022
I found this to be an intellectually stimulating if not pretty difficult read. Basic understanding of Lacanian jargon is essential I think. My reading is temporary and provisional but as of right now it is:
I think Edelman is trying to think novelty, or the truly new. The figure of the Child (always capital C) is a kind of phantasm that stands in as a desire to repeat the status quo (to reproduce the order of the same). Futurity is a void in the order of language, the structure of symbolic: it doesn't seem to signify anything except a repetition of what's already happened/happening. The Child guarantees that there will be no Real difference, that there will be a repetition of this negativity (futurity being a void, yet a highly alluring one). The homosexual (which Edelman stylizes as Sinthomosexual in some Lacanian punnage) is that figure that negates the Child, and by negating the Child negates the repetition of the order of the same. That is to say, the queer disrupts and upsets the cisheteronormative social symbolic order, the very future of this order, and in this sense takes on the role as the unthinking, unrelenting, mechanic pulsion of the death drive.
But the futurity that the figure of the Child is wed to, being already a repetition of a void and in some sense a covering-up or re-enacting of the death drive, can't sufficiently negate the negation of the queer - in other words, the queer will always be a figure of anxiety for those wed to reproductive futurism (I am unsure of the exact relationship between the negativity of futurity and the negativity of the sinthomosexual). And it should be noted that it is NOT just cisheterosexuals that are wed to it! Think about how many queers derive their meaning from being married and having kids. The logic of reproductive futurism is powerful enough to integrate (some) queers, but there will always be a remainder, a remainder one can't totally squander. The sinthomosexual (the queer figure that has no children, or has no desire to have children) is the heterogeneous element that cannot be totally subsumed under the logic of reproductive futurism (One can't help but think of online communities such as /r/childfree, many of whom are presumably heterosexuals - so the sinthomosexual is not necessarily queer, but rather a position in the Symbolic order - think Lacan's take on sexual difference). So by wedding themselves to a reproduction of the same, the sinthomosexual will always be repeated with it. The task then seems to be what it would be/mean to think futurity without the figure of the Child, to think novelty without an identical repetition of the Symbolic. That is, to generalize the the sinthomosexual's function and distribute it as the normative - does this necessarily spell extinction, as the anxieties and fears of the reproductive futurists would have it (in order to brutalize and destroy the queer), or is there a way to have children without the Child?
Of course, being a work of critical theory, there is no positive political project here ;) But there is still a lot of interesting stuff going on here.
I think Edelman is trying to think novelty, or the truly new. The figure of the Child (always capital C) is a kind of phantasm that stands in as a desire to repeat the status quo (to reproduce the order of the same). Futurity is a void in the order of language, the structure of symbolic: it doesn't seem to signify anything except a repetition of what's already happened/happening. The Child guarantees that there will be no Real difference, that there will be a repetition of this negativity (futurity being a void, yet a highly alluring one). The homosexual (which Edelman stylizes as Sinthomosexual in some Lacanian punnage) is that figure that negates the Child, and by negating the Child negates the repetition of the order of the same. That is to say, the queer disrupts and upsets the cisheteronormative social symbolic order, the very future of this order, and in this sense takes on the role as the unthinking, unrelenting, mechanic pulsion of the death drive.
But the futurity that the figure of the Child is wed to, being already a repetition of a void and in some sense a covering-up or re-enacting of the death drive, can't sufficiently negate the negation of the queer - in other words, the queer will always be a figure of anxiety for those wed to reproductive futurism (I am unsure of the exact relationship between the negativity of futurity and the negativity of the sinthomosexual). And it should be noted that it is NOT just cisheterosexuals that are wed to it! Think about how many queers derive their meaning from being married and having kids. The logic of reproductive futurism is powerful enough to integrate (some) queers, but there will always be a remainder, a remainder one can't totally squander. The sinthomosexual (the queer figure that has no children, or has no desire to have children) is the heterogeneous element that cannot be totally subsumed under the logic of reproductive futurism (One can't help but think of online communities such as /r/childfree, many of whom are presumably heterosexuals - so the sinthomosexual is not necessarily queer, but rather a position in the Symbolic order - think Lacan's take on sexual difference). So by wedding themselves to a reproduction of the same, the sinthomosexual will always be repeated with it. The task then seems to be what it would be/mean to think futurity without the figure of the Child, to think novelty without an identical repetition of the Symbolic. That is, to generalize the the sinthomosexual's function and distribute it as the normative - does this necessarily spell extinction, as the anxieties and fears of the reproductive futurists would have it (in order to brutalize and destroy the queer), or is there a way to have children without the Child?
Of course, being a work of critical theory, there is no positive political project here ;) But there is still a lot of interesting stuff going on here.
July 28, 2011
This is a really interesting book on queer theory, which establishes an adversarial relationship between the sinthomosexual (distinct for the homosexual as sexual category) and the mythos of reproductive futurism. Edelman posits The Child (distinct from a child or children) as the central figure of political authority for both the Left and the Right, each of which are concerned with the creation of a never-realizable future good. Edelman posits the sinthomosexual--a figure not defined by sexual preference, but by a dedication to jouissance--as the counterpoint to this master narrative of futurism. He argues that all queers (in the broadest sense) are involved in the sinthomosexual project, regardless of whether they raise families and support the logic of futurity. Interestingly, however, the figures Edelman points to as representing sinthomosexual jouissance are primarily not traditionally homosexual (Silas Marner, Scrooge, the birds in Hitchcock's film).
The other really interesting thing I found in No Future was Edelman's linguistic play. A lot of philosophy/theory I read translated from French or German has translator footnotes explaining puns that work in the original but don't translate to English, but Edelman plays with puns and language games more than any other English language theorist I've yet read.
The other really interesting thing I found in No Future was Edelman's linguistic play. A lot of philosophy/theory I read translated from French or German has translator footnotes explaining puns that work in the original but don't translate to English, but Edelman plays with puns and language games more than any other English language theorist I've yet read.
February 22, 2014
yet another 'poststucturalist' attack on historicity, this time in the name of an anarcho-queer non-futurism. this one, however, has more to offer than most: an excellent 'deconstruction' of cult-of-the-child ideology and heteronormativity (here called 'reproductive futurism'); searing indictment of institutionalized homophobia in american politics and culture; persuasive coinage of 'sinthomosexuality' to describe cultural figuration of the queer as death drive; lucid application of lacanian theory (i learned more about lacan here than i do from lacan himself [or zizek]); and uncannily witty and pleasurable prose. not bad! but will leave those of a more socialist mindset (like myself) scratching their heads or disagreeing in places.
February 6, 2024
are the ideas iconic? yes. do i love them? also yes. can i consume any media ever again without thinking at least a little about this book? no not really. do i fully understand everything edelman waffled on about? haha no. is any of it practicable? nope! but it never really pretends to be so u gotta give props for that. did edelman write almost every sentence, in every paragraph, in every chapter, in the whole book, with WAY too many clauses and commas? yes. have i read much freud or lacan? well no - and i can’t be arsed to tbh. overall - No Future has gotta be some of my fav queer theory - especially the first chapter, which is 100% the strongest. gonna continue to use this book as reasoning behind my absolute lack of plans for my future! yay!
July 13, 2022
Having a blast with all the comments on this one. No Future is one of the less palatable theory books out of a field that already aggresses the grain if it's worth its salt, and the core tenant of "I'm not interested in upholding a future that serves only to replicate a broken past" is somewhat hostile to you know, a species. A species that pretty much exists on some level to do that. You might notice that "I'm not interested in upholding a future that serves only to replicate a broken past" leaves room for new and varied futures that focus on reparatively mutating away from the past, and so I should revise my take on Lee's thesis: "I'm not interested in upholding any future, since the future is the primary tool of a broken past". You might then say, "well, what if we reclaimed the future", to which I revise further: "I'm not interested in futurity as a concept, since the future can only be a primary tool of a broken past". I still think there might be some way to square the sinthomosexual and non-procreative future that does not replicate a past, and if you are looking for a thesis which feels widely applicable to life, no. If you want to hear about some interesting reinterpretations of older theory in a queer context and bash not just children but the Child, then this is a book, which you can read.
Also if you really like analysis of Hitchcock or sympathetic(????) takes on Scrooge, this might be the volume for you. I personally think that the Tumblr sexyman is in some ways also an embodiment of the death drive. I have no way to evidence this but I think the overlap with sinthomosexuality is non-zero. Expect this paper out from me literally never.
Also if you really like analysis of Hitchcock or sympathetic(????) takes on Scrooge, this might be the volume for you. I personally think that the Tumblr sexyman is in some ways also an embodiment of the death drive. I have no way to evidence this but I think the overlap with sinthomosexuality is non-zero. Expect this paper out from me literally never.
August 23, 2020
I expected this book to be unapologetically anti-natalist and anti-assimilationist, and when it is, it is great.
But for most of its volume it is actually Lacanian, which never sounds as anything other than gibberish to me. Edelman would present a curious reading of Dickens, or Faulkner, or Hitchcock, then he would weave his analysis through the Lacanian framework, and my eyes would glaze over. The only thing that would help me get through these endless passages would be the author's impressive word plays - I never would have thought anyone capable of coming up with the amount of avian punnery Edelman utilises in his reading of The Birds.
The other essential axis of No Future is the rejection of object-level politics, which Edelman sees as always oriented towards a future (that is never the present) and the figure of the Child (to the detriment of, among others, the queers that some children become). That break with the political can be quite thought-provoking, though ironically I found myself most fascinated by the Edelman's discussion of concrete contemporary political actions, as when he excoriates the Catholic church's child-saving rhetoric in the wake of its sexual abuse cases.
All I want for Christmas is a queer theory that is free from engagement with psychoanalysis.
But for most of its volume it is actually Lacanian, which never sounds as anything other than gibberish to me. Edelman would present a curious reading of Dickens, or Faulkner, or Hitchcock, then he would weave his analysis through the Lacanian framework, and my eyes would glaze over. The only thing that would help me get through these endless passages would be the author's impressive word plays - I never would have thought anyone capable of coming up with the amount of avian punnery Edelman utilises in his reading of The Birds.
The other essential axis of No Future is the rejection of object-level politics, which Edelman sees as always oriented towards a future (that is never the present) and the figure of the Child (to the detriment of, among others, the queers that some children become). That break with the political can be quite thought-provoking, though ironically I found myself most fascinated by the Edelman's discussion of concrete contemporary political actions, as when he excoriates the Catholic church's child-saving rhetoric in the wake of its sexual abuse cases.
All I want for Christmas is a queer theory that is free from engagement with psychoanalysis.
December 4, 2020
*Warning* A small rant
To be completely honest, I don't have a lot of patience for scholars who use words like verisimilitude. When you throw in so many bizarre and confusing words, in really weird ways, you alienate a whole audience of people who would otherwise have been interested in your ideas (aka people who don't have ph.d's). If you are specifically writing to scholars within your field, or just people who know the general lingo and enjoy figuring out literary puzzles, I get it. But for me, it was just frustrating. I'm at the end of my undergraduate degree, I've taken political theory classes before, and I consider myself to be generally well-read - but this was hard for me to read. However, that could just be me, and others could have found this an easier read.
I think the ideas are really insightful and challenge societal norms in ways I don't often ponder. I just wish Edelman would write a simplified version. Maybe I'm outing myself as not the smartest budding academic, but idk - thought I'd throw it out there.
To be completely honest, I don't have a lot of patience for scholars who use words like verisimilitude. When you throw in so many bizarre and confusing words, in really weird ways, you alienate a whole audience of people who would otherwise have been interested in your ideas (aka people who don't have ph.d's). If you are specifically writing to scholars within your field, or just people who know the general lingo and enjoy figuring out literary puzzles, I get it. But for me, it was just frustrating. I'm at the end of my undergraduate degree, I've taken political theory classes before, and I consider myself to be generally well-read - but this was hard for me to read. However, that could just be me, and others could have found this an easier read.
I think the ideas are really insightful and challenge societal norms in ways I don't often ponder. I just wish Edelman would write a simplified version. Maybe I'm outing myself as not the smartest budding academic, but idk - thought I'd throw it out there.
September 4, 2024
people hate this book… and i kinda see why. there’s some very interesting analysis in here on the status of the Other in a society obsessed with futurism, but edelman is more interested in fetishizing the special status of the Other (the queer) than engaging any interpretation of futurism itself (who exactly is this Child that edelman hates so much?). that said, i do take a point he raises that there is a foundational (psychoanalytic) element of queerness that requires it always to stand outside of liberalism, and i think he’s onto something there. and yet, he leaves that only for a few pages in chapter 1 and abandons that analysis throughout the rest of the book. i definitely think this is still worth reading for anyone specializing in this field, but it misses many marks along its way.
August 3, 2016
Brief summary of the book: "Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we're collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital ls and with small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop."
Less brief summary (caveat: I am not super well versed in queer theory)
Going by the reviews already here, it might be useful to point out what the book isn't about. The book isn't actual children, or even actual queer people, but rather the space queerness occupies (or doesn't) in the symbolic order of society. In particular, it's a rant against how all social thought is foreclosed by and submits to the figure of the child.
To draw some intuitions about this: think about how the anti-gay argument typically relies on "think about the children" rhetoric which it uses to censor and deny benefits, but also how the pro-gay side draws up the image of the young, closeted individual who is struggling. Think about how the anti-abortion side relies on the "the fetus is a child" argument, while the pro-choice side strenuously feels the need to deny this. Think about stories like Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and "Harry Potter" where an unmarried man is portrayed as the enemy of the child, until he either gives into heterosexual wholesomeness (when Scrooge becomes "a second father" to Tiny Tim) or is vanquished (Voldemort defeated by love).
Edelman draws from Lacanian psychoanalysis and semiotics to argue that all signs create a rift between subject and self, and this ensures that there is always an excess which is both necessary to sustain the sign, but also threatens it (call this the "death drive"). He argues that this death drive is what "queer" has been identified with traditionally by conservatives. Even if the people who occupy the space of "queer" right now were to be displaced so that they could be assimilated into the public sphere, the space of queerness will still exist. So instead of the usual liberal route to "progress", Edelman suggests a new queer ethics wherein queers embrace their queerness as queerness.
Importantly, this does not mean queer people will forge a new identity, but rather that the whole symbolic order (which always depends on treading on whatever is queer) is torched to the ground, and along with it all possibility for any stable identity. In its place, we will have access to jouissance, a kind of joyful elation that goes "beyond the pleasure principle."
The book is exceptionally well-written and Edelman is clearly very clever, and maybe this is just my Stockholm Syndrome talking (being a part of the Symbolic order Eledman wants to do away with and all), but I cannot see what is supposed to be appealing about his vision. As an attempt to think beyond the limits imposed by the object of the child and futurity, this work certainly opens up novel ground. But what we find there seems to be a barren meaning-less wasteland, where even the possibility of any serious sense of self is lost. If that is all he has to offer, he can keep his jouissance- I would rather worship at the shrine of the Child, than join Edelman's solipsistic, narcissistic death-cult (here: not physical death, but the death of the human as human in any recognizable way).
Less brief summary (caveat: I am not super well versed in queer theory)
Going by the reviews already here, it might be useful to point out what the book isn't about. The book isn't actual children, or even actual queer people, but rather the space queerness occupies (or doesn't) in the symbolic order of society. In particular, it's a rant against how all social thought is foreclosed by and submits to the figure of the child.
To draw some intuitions about this: think about how the anti-gay argument typically relies on "think about the children" rhetoric which it uses to censor and deny benefits, but also how the pro-gay side draws up the image of the young, closeted individual who is struggling. Think about how the anti-abortion side relies on the "the fetus is a child" argument, while the pro-choice side strenuously feels the need to deny this. Think about stories like Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and "Harry Potter" where an unmarried man is portrayed as the enemy of the child, until he either gives into heterosexual wholesomeness (when Scrooge becomes "a second father" to Tiny Tim) or is vanquished (Voldemort defeated by love).
Edelman draws from Lacanian psychoanalysis and semiotics to argue that all signs create a rift between subject and self, and this ensures that there is always an excess which is both necessary to sustain the sign, but also threatens it (call this the "death drive"). He argues that this death drive is what "queer" has been identified with traditionally by conservatives. Even if the people who occupy the space of "queer" right now were to be displaced so that they could be assimilated into the public sphere, the space of queerness will still exist. So instead of the usual liberal route to "progress", Edelman suggests a new queer ethics wherein queers embrace their queerness as queerness.
Importantly, this does not mean queer people will forge a new identity, but rather that the whole symbolic order (which always depends on treading on whatever is queer) is torched to the ground, and along with it all possibility for any stable identity. In its place, we will have access to jouissance, a kind of joyful elation that goes "beyond the pleasure principle."
The book is exceptionally well-written and Edelman is clearly very clever, and maybe this is just my Stockholm Syndrome talking (being a part of the Symbolic order Eledman wants to do away with and all), but I cannot see what is supposed to be appealing about his vision. As an attempt to think beyond the limits imposed by the object of the child and futurity, this work certainly opens up novel ground. But what we find there seems to be a barren meaning-less wasteland, where even the possibility of any serious sense of self is lost. If that is all he has to offer, he can keep his jouissance- I would rather worship at the shrine of the Child, than join Edelman's solipsistic, narcissistic death-cult (here: not physical death, but the death of the human as human in any recognizable way).
October 2, 2023
While I generally agree with the thesis of this book, about how queers should search for a different alternatives than just being sublimated in an order of normalcy or being sacrificed always at the behest of childhood and a future child that is always invoked yet never fully manifests that manages to be present even when the talk is not centered around heteronormativity and reproduction. I disagree with the theoretical framework it leaves way too much outside of consideration (it doesn't even talk about transexuality at all, something that becomes a huge blind spot in a book interested in the relationship of the queer to psychosexuality), its framework hinges in psychoanalyzing media almost fixating their meaning in the symbolic order of society's psyche but not connecting that to life outside said media, the book focuses way too much in doing something more akin to media criticism than using examples in politics or lived experience as ancillary points for driving it's political message across.
March 3, 2024
picked this up as an antidote to some unfortunate recent broody tendencies of late. a little disappointed to find that Edelman’s ‘Child’ is not in fact a child who he is going to spend the text turning his faggy nose up at, but is in fact a construction of cisheteropatriarchal society which it uses to subjugate and queer weirdos.
seems like it’s partly an anger response to seeing his friends being killed/being let die (synonyms?) by the state though. leads to flashes of beautiful writing like:
“Somewhere, someone else will be savagely beaten and left to die—sacrificed to a future whose beat goes on, like a pulse or a heart—and another corpse will be left like a mangled scarecrow to frighten the birds who are gathering now, who are beating their wings, and who, like the drive, keep on coming.”
Actually pretty cunty for him to pull that shit after spending the whole text proudly associating the queer with death and the non-queer with life and the future
easy to read as bleak but like, i guess tomorrow belongs to YOU if you want it to
seems like it’s partly an anger response to seeing his friends being killed/being let die (synonyms?) by the state though. leads to flashes of beautiful writing like:
“Somewhere, someone else will be savagely beaten and left to die—sacrificed to a future whose beat goes on, like a pulse or a heart—and another corpse will be left like a mangled scarecrow to frighten the birds who are gathering now, who are beating their wings, and who, like the drive, keep on coming.”
Actually pretty cunty for him to pull that shit after spending the whole text proudly associating the queer with death and the non-queer with life and the future
easy to read as bleak but like, i guess tomorrow belongs to YOU if you want it to
November 12, 2017
Great analysis of the specter of child corruption in straight politics, but a very Freudian idea of the Death Drive that recapitulates queerness as an unknown monster lurking beyond the boundaries of civilization. Reminiscent of Leo Bersani's "Is the Anus a Grave?" which is just too much Freudian nonsense for me to really take seriously. Could have been better with an analysis of racial and transgender bodies.
January 24, 2025
O "culto ao Filho" e a figura da criança: Edelman identifica a criança como o símbolo central do futuro e do familismo. A figura do "Filho" torna-se a base para justificar narrativas políticas e sociais voltadas para a preservação da continuidade heterossexual e da reprodução do Estado, marginalizando as vidas que não se encaixam nessa lógica. Neste contexto, LGBTs+ são uma ameaça ao futuro e à estabilidade social. Edelman observa que os assassinatos de gays podem ser entendidos como manifestações extremas da exclusão simbólica e da abjeção que o discurso conservador promove. Quando passa-se a rotular gays como representantes da "cultura de morte", como figuras que supostamente ameaçam o futuro da sociedade e a ordem heteronormativa, cria-se uma narrativa que justifica, direta ou indiretamente, atos de violência contra nós.
O livro me chamou atenção desde o início por abordar um tema tão relevante no contexto atual: o capitalismo está se reorganizando em conjunto com o neofascismo. A percepção de que a presença LGBT+ deixou de ser tão lucrativa quanto o apoio daqueles que promovem políticas de ódio, como as de Trump e da Meta, foi o que me motivou a começar esta leitura, mesmo ciente das problemáticas que ela pode trazer. Fiquei curioso para ver o que poderia me agradar ou incomodar.
Logo nas primeiras páginas, o livro explora profundamente a ideia da pulsão de morte como algo central, conectando-a à negatividade social atribuída ao queer. Essa perspectiva, que desmantela o sujeito por dentro e se opõe às normas de viabilidade social, pode ser desconfortável, mas é muito rica. O sonho de toda bixa é viver a mediocridade do cotidiano, mas será que vale a pena reforçar tudo o que sustenta nossa opressão? A discussão sobre a relação da comunidade LGBTQIA+ com o futuro é marcante. A afirmação de que nada intrínseco às nossas identidades nos impede de resistir ao futuro ou de querer reproduzir-se continua muito atual. Muitos de nós seguem sendo cooptados pelas ilusões do liberalismo político.
As passagens sobre o "Child as futurity's emblem" e a ideia de que o futuro deve ser interrompido provocam um misto de sentimentos, especialmente quando conectadas à ideia de que o que há de mais queer em nós é insistir na ruptura com o futuro como repetição do passado. Já chega dessa ideia de desenvolvimento às custas de tantos seres e do planeta. A análise sobre como o discurso antiaborto exibe fetos como símbolos de família reforça o poder das imagens e a força emocional dessas narrativas. Isso me lembrou o episódio recente envolvendo a Maíra Cardi, pois expor o feto nas redes sociais serve a uma agenda política.
Apesar de apreciar a profundidade teórica e os argumentos provocativos, senti que o livro exagera na psicanálise e na análise fílmica, deixando de lado elementos mais concretos que poderiam equilibrar a discussão. Para quem já viveu a experiência dissidente e ouviu frases como "você não tem futuro", certas partes são bem impactantes e fáceis de se identificar. No entanto, seria interessante ver uma abordagem mais prática. Mesmo assim, a leitura deixou reflexões interessantes e, de certo modo, revolucionária. Inclusive, para pensar a Palestina e o apelo de solidariedade: "israel está matando mulheres e crianças", uma vez que até nisso, a ênfase no tipo de pessoa que morre não é por acaso.
There is no future!!! God Save The Queen!!!
O livro me chamou atenção desde o início por abordar um tema tão relevante no contexto atual: o capitalismo está se reorganizando em conjunto com o neofascismo. A percepção de que a presença LGBT+ deixou de ser tão lucrativa quanto o apoio daqueles que promovem políticas de ódio, como as de Trump e da Meta, foi o que me motivou a começar esta leitura, mesmo ciente das problemáticas que ela pode trazer. Fiquei curioso para ver o que poderia me agradar ou incomodar.
Logo nas primeiras páginas, o livro explora profundamente a ideia da pulsão de morte como algo central, conectando-a à negatividade social atribuída ao queer. Essa perspectiva, que desmantela o sujeito por dentro e se opõe às normas de viabilidade social, pode ser desconfortável, mas é muito rica. O sonho de toda bixa é viver a mediocridade do cotidiano, mas será que vale a pena reforçar tudo o que sustenta nossa opressão? A discussão sobre a relação da comunidade LGBTQIA+ com o futuro é marcante. A afirmação de que nada intrínseco às nossas identidades nos impede de resistir ao futuro ou de querer reproduzir-se continua muito atual. Muitos de nós seguem sendo cooptados pelas ilusões do liberalismo político.
As passagens sobre o "Child as futurity's emblem" e a ideia de que o futuro deve ser interrompido provocam um misto de sentimentos, especialmente quando conectadas à ideia de que o que há de mais queer em nós é insistir na ruptura com o futuro como repetição do passado. Já chega dessa ideia de desenvolvimento às custas de tantos seres e do planeta. A análise sobre como o discurso antiaborto exibe fetos como símbolos de família reforça o poder das imagens e a força emocional dessas narrativas. Isso me lembrou o episódio recente envolvendo a Maíra Cardi, pois expor o feto nas redes sociais serve a uma agenda política.
Apesar de apreciar a profundidade teórica e os argumentos provocativos, senti que o livro exagera na psicanálise e na análise fílmica, deixando de lado elementos mais concretos que poderiam equilibrar a discussão. Para quem já viveu a experiência dissidente e ouviu frases como "você não tem futuro", certas partes são bem impactantes e fáceis de se identificar. No entanto, seria interessante ver uma abordagem mais prática. Mesmo assim, a leitura deixou reflexões interessantes e, de certo modo, revolucionária. Inclusive, para pensar a Palestina e o apelo de solidariedade: "israel está matando mulheres e crianças", uma vez que até nisso, a ênfase no tipo de pessoa que morre não é por acaso.
There is no future!!! God Save The Queen!!!
October 28, 2022
This one's spicy 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
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April 3, 2019Lee 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.
October 5, 2017
Compared to what I'm used to reading (lookin' at you, Judith Butler), Edelman's writing is great: lively, full of jargon and full of puns, embracing pathos and the various uses of "fuck," and contextualizing psychoanalytic theory with both examples and analysis of everyday rhetoric (news op eds and a pope's speech, for instance) as well as analysis of literature and film.
As far as the content: as a theory, it's true to itself, meaning it refuses to offer hope, any kind of groundwork or source of redemption for fixing the social order. What this means, though, is that we as society (but particularly, the queer community) are left, in typical poststructuralist fashion, with nothing: only a destruction of meaning, a negative form of resistance, a realization of queer identity/figural relation in society, a means to align themselves with the sinthomosexual...but without a way to truly protect themselves from the violence enacted against them by a society structured by reproductive futurism's logic. After all, if sinthomosexuality offers no future, and if its defense is that it merely represents an inarticulable truth of humanity (jouissance and the death drive) upon which the very discursive logic of futurism relies, then it also seems to risk aligning itself with moral nihilism--a questionable, and perhaps untenable, position.
I think what Edelman offers, though, is an important insight into yet another means in which (the dominant heteronormative patriarchal culture's) political ideology coerces its populace into submission/acting in the state's interest--its interest in nation building, for instance--at the expense of its marginalized communities like the lgbtq+. His theory also offers us other ways to conceptualize, though admittedly in the interest of heterosexual relations, the abortion debate/birth control/women's right to reproductive health.
As far as the content: as a theory, it's true to itself, meaning it refuses to offer hope, any kind of groundwork or source of redemption for fixing the social order. What this means, though, is that we as society (but particularly, the queer community) are left, in typical poststructuralist fashion, with nothing: only a destruction of meaning, a negative form of resistance, a realization of queer identity/figural relation in society, a means to align themselves with the sinthomosexual...but without a way to truly protect themselves from the violence enacted against them by a society structured by reproductive futurism's logic. After all, if sinthomosexuality offers no future, and if its defense is that it merely represents an inarticulable truth of humanity (jouissance and the death drive) upon which the very discursive logic of futurism relies, then it also seems to risk aligning itself with moral nihilism--a questionable, and perhaps untenable, position.
I think what Edelman offers, though, is an important insight into yet another means in which (the dominant heteronormative patriarchal culture's) political ideology coerces its populace into submission/acting in the state's interest--its interest in nation building, for instance--at the expense of its marginalized communities like the lgbtq+. His theory also offers us other ways to conceptualize, though admittedly in the interest of heterosexual relations, the abortion debate/birth control/women's right to reproductive health.
May 18, 2010
In No Future (2004), Lee Edelman argues that the dominant political discourse is one of "reproductive futurism," which takes the child and heteronormativity as its commonplaces. Queerness figures outside this political regime, "the place of . . . abjection expressed in the stigma" (3). The social is defined and limited by "the image of the Child" (not real, living children) by structuring our political discourse (11). Threats to the reproductive order are seen as threats to the social order (11). He argues that "queerness attains its ethical value precisely insofar as it accedes to that place, excepting its figural status as resistance to the viability of the social while insisting on the inextricability of such resistance from every social structure" (3). He makes an ethical claim about what queers should do: queers should be inimical to the social by rejecting the current social order and proclaiming violently, "fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that it serves to prop" (29). He claims that it is only by renouncing anti-sociality that queers can be accepted into the social order (47), and asks why we don't just idenfity with what we're blamed for (49).
November 23, 2017
Lee Edelman’s prose can be difficult to read. In part this is because much of his argument draws from Lacan, and I find that when scholars let Lacanian terminology give shape to their sentence structure, the end result is a price of writing that can be somewhat esoteric and requires time to carefully parse out. This said, No Future does have its redeeming qualities, specifically framed around the central metaphor of The Child and the sinthohomosexual. The first is the byproduct of heterosexual coupling and the focal point for futurist arguments (usually). Edelman argues that The Child is always the focal point, but I think he oversteps his boundaries in making this claim since it overlooks the wider history of science fiction and utopia visions of societies that are not necessarily child oriented. The second is a Lacanian inspired term for the queer subject who disrupts the social systems they occupy, or to borrow Lauren Berlant’s terminology, the sinthohomosexual resists the influence of National Fantasy. An interesting read, but a challenging one.
August 11, 2023
Yikes. But, this book enscapsulates so much of the current queer movement, it's practically genius.
Extreme elitism? Check
Performative rebelliousness? Check
Weird fascination with violence? Check
No one knows what you're blabbering about? Check
Hate of everything normal? Check
You can tell the author was masturbating while writing? Check
But don't mind my words, because they are just a provocation.
Extreme elitism? Check
Performative rebelliousness? Check
Weird fascination with violence? Check
No one knows what you're blabbering about? Check
Hate of everything normal? Check
You can tell the author was masturbating while writing? Check
But don't mind my words, because they are just a provocation.
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December 24, 2021Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we're collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital ls and with small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop.Yeah man, fuck them kids!
October 6, 2020
Pure pretentiousness.
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