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No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Series Q)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.76601
EAN: 9780822333692
ISBN: 0822333694
Label: Duke University Press
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 191
Publication Date: 2004-11
Publisher: Duke University Press
Studio: Duke University Press
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Editorial Review:
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - No Future, indeed!
The most powerful thing I can say in response to the mediocre reviews here with which I strongly disagree is that their authors haven't argued with Lee Edelman himself. His work is flawless (if you need any further convincing, look at the responses he has written to his critics). And, in my honest opinion, his language is nothing short of beautiful. Take any negativity towards _No Future_ with a grain of salt; it's an enlightening read.
Rating:  - No Future
This surely is the death drive. Deathly because it is nowhere near the jouissance of living `queer.' The problem is that Edelman has defined the queer. To Edelman, the Queer disrupts the Symbolic with an anti-politic, anti-oppositional oppositional movement. Because the Queer only disidentifies, the proper queer project now, after Edelman, would be to repudiate the work he set forth, or at least not pay attention to it, the %.1 percent who (can) read it. An interesting and obnoxious book. If ... Read More
Rating: - does politics need futurity?
This is a smart, funny, and challenging book. (It does require fluency in theory-speak, largely of the Lacan dialect. So Edelman is writing largely for academics of a certain ilk. Fair enough, but I wonder what these ideas would look like if they were written with a larger public in mind--it seems to me Edelman's challenge to the child-driven purity politics of the US will never reach those who operate most within its languages and symbols.)
Edelman makes a compelling case for refusing ... Read More
Rating: - Important, but...
Lee Edleman's book poses important questions for all of us about "queerness" and resistance to our presumedly "normal" cultural investments in a redemptive future figured most vividly in the notion of the "child." I admire the work being done here, and in particular the intellectual chutzpah it takes to dismantle this dominant ideological framework while taking on Baudrillard, Butler and other formidable thinkers. It is, however, unfortunate that Edelman seems to have become enchanted as much by his ... Read More
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