{"product_id":"sex-or-the-unbearable-paperback-softback-9780822355946","title":"Sex, or the Unbearable (Paperback \/ softback) 9780822355946","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eSex, or the Unbearable\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eLauren Berlant (Author), Lee Edelman (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9780822355946\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003ePaperback \/ softback, published 9 December 2013\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e168 pages, 6 photographs\u003cbr\u003e22.9 x 14 x 1 cm, 0.249 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e“What’s lovely about this exchange is that Berlant and Edelman’s mutually locked horns don’t make us feel as though a cleverer person has already figured things out and we’re simply not smart or qualified enough to piece together the unspoken counterarguments they would have to our doubts.”\u003c\/div\u003e - Colin Low (Against the Hype) \u003cdiv\u003e\"This collaboration between Berlant and Edelman has a feel for the ecology of thinking as it passes between two points. Like holding one’s breath under water or passing a balloon back and forth without its touching the floor, these conversations illuminate the sense of timing with which ideas respond to and are shaped by each other.\" \u003c\/div\u003e - Michael D. Snediker (Theory \u0026amp; Event) \u003cdiv\u003e\"Berlant and Edelman’s three-act dialogue is wonderfully intriguing, especially in regard to how the dialogue itself bears witness to the intellectual process of ‘thinking through’ in the dialogic form.\"\u003c\/div\u003e - Marcie Bianco (Lambda Literary Review) \u003cdiv\u003e“Berlant and Edelman take debates around the antisocial thesis as a point of departure to theorize the importance of relationality, loss and repair, sovereignty, and negativity in the politics and ethics of queer theory. Despite the overlapping topics of interest that have marked their respective works, their varying theoretical approaches make for a smart, enlivening, and productive conversation in \u003ci\u003eSex, or the Unbearable\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003c\/div\u003e - Fiona I. B. Ngô (American Studies) \u003cdiv\u003e“While Berlant and Edelman do not address popular romances, their work can be informative to the work of romance scholars in tackling issues of the place of sex and the erotic, especially within some romance tropes, such as discovery of a new sexual orientation plots in queer romances, or submissive-for-you plots in many erotic romances of all orientations.” \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e - Amanda Jo Hobson (Journal of Popular Romance Studies) \u003cdiv\u003e“Among the book’s major attractions is its inventive dialogic form, and Berlant and Edelman’s masterful close readings of diverse media. The authors alternate named passages, riffing on each others’ ideas and including their moments of complex ambiguous affect, including responses to the other of misappropriation, frustration, delight and surprise, so often elided in collaborative critical theory. This dialogic form and its auto-analysis is one of the great intellectual joys of the book, a fascinating and inventive device well-suited to a discussion of the complex investments subjects have in relationality, including sex, conversation, and pedagogy.”\u003c\/div\u003e - Jessica Durham (Colloquy) \u003cdiv\u003e“These two authors offer an intense and highly insightful account of interactions between two subjects that, I suggest, could be fruitfully applied to understanding encounters in organizations. They show some of the complexities of relationality: it is violent, pleasurable, productive, a scene of fantasy and misrecognition, all these and more.”\u003c\/div\u003e - Nancy Harding (Gender, Work \u0026amp; Organization) \u003cdiv\u003e“As an overall project, \u003ci\u003eSex, or the Unbearable\u003c\/i\u003e pushes forward the debate on queer negativity and antisociality, whilst also contributing to contemporary queer, feminist and cultural theory’s wider critiques of academic knowledge production and the political utility of academic scholarship.”\u003c\/div\u003e - Kathryn Medien and Jacob Breslow (Sexualities)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eSex, or the Unbearable\u003c\/i\u003e is a dialogue between Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman, two of our leading theorists of sexuality, politics, and culture. In juxtaposing \u003ci\u003esex\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ethe unbearable\u003c\/i\u003e they don't propose that sex \u003ci\u003eis\u003c\/i\u003e unbearable, only that it unleashes unbearable contradictions that we nonetheless struggle to bear. In Berlant and Edelman's exchange, those terms invoke disturbances produced in encounters with others, ourselves, and the world, disturbances that tap into threats induced by fears of loss or rupture as well as by our hopes for repair. \u003cp\u003eThrough virtuoso interpretations of works of cinema, photography, critical theory, and literature, including Lydia Davis's story \"Break It Down\" (reprinted in full here), Berlant and Edelman explore what it means to live with negativity, with those divisions that may be irreparable. Together, they consider how such negativity affects politics, theory, and intimately felt encounters. But where their critical approaches differ, neither hesitates to voice disagreement. Their very discussion-punctuated with moments of frustration, misconstruction, anxiety, aggression, recognition, exhilaration, and inspiration-enacts both the difficulty and the potential of encounter, the subject of this unusual exchange between two eminent critics and close friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003ePreface vii\u003cbr\u003e 1. Sex without Optimism 1\u003cbr\u003e 2. What Survives 35\u003cbr\u003e 3. Living with Negativity 63\u003cbr\u003e Afterwords 119\u003cbr\u003e Appendix. \"\u003cbr\u003eBreak It Down\"\u003cbr\u003e \/ Lydia Davis 127\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments 135\u003cbr\u003e References 137\u003cbr\u003e Index 141\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"Duke University Press Books","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52521230205208,"sku":"9780822355946","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/sex-or-the-unbearable-paperback-softback-9780822355946","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}