The future is kid stuff: queer theory, desidentification and the death drive
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.9771/peri.v2i14.44273Abstract
Abstract: In this essay, Lee Edelman builds on Lacanian psychoanalysis and deconstruction to outline a radicallynegative ethics for 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 promise of a 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, which is materialized through irony, jouissance,
and, ultimately, the death drive itself.
Keywords: Queer theory. Psychoanalysis. Childhood.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Marcelo de Troi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License that allows the work to be shared with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal, but prohibits commercial use.
Authors are authorized to enter into separate additional contracts for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (e.g., publishing in an institutional repository or as a book chapter), with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to publish and distribute their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their personal website) at any point before or during the editorial process, as this can generate productive changes and increase the impact and citation of the published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
