Distillations Theory, Ethics, Affect [Hardcover]

Distilling into concise and focused formulations many of the main ideas that Mari Ruti has sought to articulate throughout her writing career, this book reflects on the general state of contemporary theory as it relates to posthumanist ethics, political resistance, subjectivity, agency, desire, and bad feelings such as anxiety. It offers a critique of progressive theory's tendency to advance extreme models of revolt that have little real-life applicability. The chapters move fluidly between several theoretical registers, the most obvious of these being continental philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, Butlerian ethics, affect theory, and queer theory. One of the central aims ofDistillationsis to explore the largely uncharted territory between psychoanalysis and affect theory, which are frequently pitted against each other as hopelessly incompatible, but which Ruti shows can be brought into a productive dialogue.

1. The Quest for the Posthumanist Universal
2. When Forgiveness Is Not Enough: Arguing with Judith Butler
3. The Bad Habits of Critical Theory: On the Rigid Rituals of Thought
4. Queer Theory's Rhetoric of Bad Feelings: A Critical Assessment
5. Why Some Things Matter More than Others: A Lacanian Explanation
6. Rupture or Resignation? Between Lacan and Affect Theory
7. Why Is There So Much Anxiety? Capitalism, Desire, Excess
8. Is Suffering an Event?
Bibliography
Index

Mari Ruti's is among the most singular and significant voices in theoretical writing today. Her latest book, aptly named, condenses and refines her most recent thinking on the conflictual intersections between Lacanian political theory, affect theory, queer theory, and feminism, providing indispensable reflections on questions of ethics and agency, defiance and desire, the particularities of suffering and the precarities of love. Ruti calls her field 'progressive critical theory, broadly understood,' andDistillationsdemonstrates that no one understl3/