Dans un entretien, Lauren Berlant souligne et affirme que l'optimisme cruel n'est pas l'objet lui-même, mais plutôt la relation :
« Une relation d'optimisme cruel est un dilemme dans lequel votre attachement à un objet vous soutient dans la vie, alors que cet objet est en réalité une menace pour votre épanouissement. On ne peut donc pas dire qu'il existe des objets qui ont la qualité d'être cruels ou non cruels, c'est la relation que vous entretenez avec eux qui compte. Peut-être qu'être en couple n'est pas une relation d'optimisme cruel pour vous, car être en couple vous donne le sentiment d'avoir un ancrage dans le monde ; alors que pour d'autres personnes, être en couple peut être d'une part un soulagement de la solitude, et d'autre part la présence envahissante d'une personne qui doit supporter le fardeau de satisfaire tous vos besoins. Ce n'est donc pas l'objet qui pose problème, mais la manière dont nous apprenons à être en relation. »

(en) https://societyandspace.com/material/interviews/interview-with-lauren-berlant/

#attachement #optimisme #psychologie #sociologie #foi #espoir #Berlant #LaurenBerlant #couple #relations #hétérosexualité #dominationMasculine #famille #croyances #valeurs #patriarcat #hétéronormativité #sureté #soin #pouvoirDeSoi #lobbyLGBT

Interview with Lauren Berlant | Society and space

Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, has generated a path-breaking body of scholarship that has opened up and reinvigorated interdisciplinary conversations about citizenship, sex, law and neoliberalism for over two decades. David Seitz, a Toronto-based writer and Ph.D. candidate in human geography and women’s and gender studies at…

Society and space

In an interview, Lauren Berlant emphasizes and maintains that cruel optimism is not the object itself, but rather the relationship:
"A relation of cruel optimism is a double-bind in which your attachment to an object sustains you in life at the same time as that object is actually a threat to your flourishing. So you can't say that there are objects that have the quality of cruelty or not cruelty, it's how you have the relationship to them. Like it might be that being in a couple is not a relation of cruel optimism for you, because being in a couple actually makes you feel like you have a grounding in the world, whereas for other people, being in a couple might be, on the one hand, a relief from loneliness, and on the other hand, the overpresence of one person who has to bear the burden of satisfying all your needs. So it's not the object that's the problem, but how we learn to be in relation."

https://societyandspace.com/material/interviews/interview-with-lauren-berlant/

#psychology #sociology #attachment #optimism #beliefs #faith #hope #Berlant #LaurenBerlant

Interview with Lauren Berlant | Society and space

Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, has generated a path-breaking body of scholarship that has opened up and reinvigorated interdisciplinary conversations about citizenship, sex, law and neoliberalism for over two decades. David Seitz, a Toronto-based writer and Ph.D. candidate in human geography and women’s and gender studies at…

Society and space

“I simply do not see why the nation has to have an official sexuality, especially one that authorizes the norm of a violent gentility; that narrows the field of legitimate political action; that supports the amputation of personal complexity into categories of simple identity; that uses cruel and mundane strategies both to promote shame for non-normative populations and to deny them state, federal, and juridical supports because they are deemed morally incompetent to their own citizenship. This is the heterosexuality I repudiate.”

― Lauren Berlant, in "The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship"

#heteroNormativity #beliefs #subjugation #radicality #appropriation #sexism #heteroSexuality #queer #Berlant #LaurenBerlant #literature #fluidity #patriarchy #subalternStudies

“To be a good subject of #neoliberal labor, one has to emit desire and identification with the affective ties of #collegiality to make networks of shared obligation seem more grounded and permanent than the corporation will support structurally.” Lauren #Berlant, Cruel Optimism, p. 218. #capitalism

"It is awkward and it is threatening to detach from what is already not working."

Lauren Berlant wrote in "Cruel Optimism" (page 263)

Book presentation: 'A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted. People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life—with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy—despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives “add up to something.”'

#criticalTheory #philosophy #psychology #sociology #neoliberalism #queer #attachment #optimism #believe #faith #hope #Berlant #LaurenBerlant

Two new issues of Media Theory are now available (open access):

https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/issue/view/18

Media Theory 7.2 (2023):
This issue features standard articles including Daniel Ross’s Stiegler Memorial Lecture, Alan Díaz Alva on Technics and Contingency, Andreas Nilsen Ervik on Multiverse Meme Generativity, and Ian Roderick on Autism Robot Therapy.

It also features a special section on ‘Lauren Berlant and Media Theory’, edited by Carolyn Pedwell & Simon Dawes. The section is introduced by Pedwell; and features articles from Chris Ingraham; Greg Seigworth & Rebecca Coleman; Angharad Closs Stephens; Ben Anderson; Henrike Kohpeiß; Lisa Blackman; Sarah Cefai; Susanna Paasonen, Vilja Jaaksi, Anu Koivunen, Kaarina Nikunen, Karoliina Talvitie-Lamberg, & Annamari Vänskä; Yasmin Gunaratnam; Chloe Turner & Rebecca Coleman; and Ali Azhar & Megan Boler.

#media #theory #oa #stiegler #berlant #humanities #philosophy

Vol. 7 No. 2 (2023): Standard Issue | Media Theory

The Routledge critical and cultural theory reader
(2008) : Badmington, Neil and Thomas, Julia
isbn: 9780415433082
#agamben #anzaldua #berlant #butler #certeau #critical_theory #culture #daniel_garber #donna_haraway #fanon #felix_guattari #ferdinand_d
#my_bibtex