Distillations: theory, ethics, affect
Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Author's note -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: The posthumanist universal: Between precarity and rebellion -- The crisis of multiculturalism -- The ethical tensions of the face -- The revival of universalism -- The singular and the universal -- The victim versus the immortal -- Sara Ahmed's brick wall -- But what is the universal? -- Historically specific universalism -- The radicalness of the universal -- Breaking with tradition, culture, and custom -- Chapter 2: The bad habits of critical theory: On the rigid rituals of thought -- Slaying the humanist subject -- Is the subject precarious or arrogant? -- Why do we want to kill the subject? -- The rewards of antinormativity -- Cleansing the plate -- The failings of relationality -- The problems of antinormativity -- Posthumanist ethical aporias -- The historicity of normative ethics -- Badiou's ethics of the event -- Chapter 3: Why some things matter more than others: A Lacanian explanation -- The hermeneutics of suspicion -- When satisfaction dissatisfies -- When dissatisfaction satisfies -- Lacan's ethics of desire -- Two types of desire -- The echo of the thing -- Outshining the lures of capitalism -- The Thing's code of ethics -- Why is there so much anxiety? -- Desire as a remedy to anxiety -- Chapter 4: Rupture or resignation? Lacanian political theory versus affect theory -- The event, the act -- The sublimity of failure -- The phallus as lack -- Different levels of negation -- Who can afford rupture? -- Negotiating with power -- What is agency? -- Refusing to answer to comrade -- What's good about feeling bad? -- The inadequacies of grieving -- Chapter 5: Socrates's mistake: Lacanians on love, Lacan on Agálmata -- Romance versus love -- Badiou's amorous event -- Love's traumatic dimensions
