Cruel Optimism

“One of the most rewarding aspects of Berlant’s work and of Cruel Optimism in particular is the sheer transformative force within the field of the political that the analysis of chosen texts offers....Berlant is required reading that should somehow help ‘activist theorists and artists back to the question of what kind of form a gesture is, what kind of imminent expressivity it holds, and what kind of affective pedagogy might be effected by it’ (261) in the work of ‘having a life’ make sense.” - Alex Lockwood, Culture Machine

“Cruel Optimism, Lauren Berlant’s brilliant new book, lays bare the price of our habitual ways of thinking about subjectivity, temporality, affect, attachment, and political investment. Exploring the condition of precarity that mocks the good life (or at least the better life) that hard work and good behavior are supposed to make possible within liberal democracy, Berlant’s bold analyses of the impasse of the present and her unflinching determination to follow a thought to its necessary end make clear why this is a crucial, indeed a necessary, book at this moment—and also why it will inform our critical discourse for years to come.” - Lee Edelman, author of No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive

“Lauren Berlant elegantly weaves together readings of contemporary art, literature, and film to reveal how our persistent aspirations for the good life are continually thwarted. Reading this book is an exciting theoretical experience but it also has a very practical, immediate, everyday quality. Berlant gives us something like a how-to guide for living in the impasse, that is, the affective and political conditions of our present.” - Michael Hardt, co-author of Commonwealth

“This brilliant book will be much read and much cited. Lauren Berlant is widely regarded as one of the most important and original critics of contemporary cultural logics. Here she offers a genuinely new angle on familiar processes through her subtle yet forceful reading of cruel optimism, the psychic and structural dynamics that keep people proximate to objects, fantasies, and worlds that seem to diminish them.” - Sara Ahmed, author of The Promise of Happiness

“Lauren Berlant is not shitting on you or your dream. OK, yes, her latest book is called Cruel Optimism. . . . . Yes, the University of Chicago professor will break down everything you hold dear: food, love, politics, family, virtuous New Year’s resolutions. And yes, within a few pages, there’s that creeping sensation that, whatever makes you tick, it’s got you on the fast track to ruin and disappointment. . . . Nevertheless . . . Cruel Optimism is less brutal analysis than a dark, lush still-life of American fantasies and our Quixotic lunges toward them. An affective portrait of the 99%.” - Caitlin Hu, Bitch

“This is Berlant at her most revolutionarily queer, questioning what would happen if we stopped thinking of ourselves in terms of identity categories, and instead reorganized our sense of self around the specific objects and ideas to which we are attached and the affects that they produce in us.” - Chase Dimock, Lambda Literary Review

“Cruel Optimism is a must read for any scholar interested in exploring the affective dimensions of precarity. . . . Cruel Optimism does precisely what Berlant’s work always does - it changes the conversation in such a way that it makes you wonder why we weren’t talking about these things all along.” - Anna E. Ward, New Formations

“If you are looking for some new language to use to describe the current crisis of hope, read Cruel Optimism. . . . It is a wild, deeply witty examination of our attachments to food, love, politics, family, and pop culture.” - Kate Clinton, Progressive

"What I loved about Berlant’s work was how, amid the fraying of national fantasies like upward mobility, meritocracy, job security and equality, Berlant made it clear that feelings we assume are solely private — depression, bitterness, resentment — are anything but. Here, we might say, was Berlant’s theory of the 'intimate public sphere' — a version of love — in practice. It was their vision of how we might come together and attach ourselves to people and ideas that might actually love us back." - Jane Hu, New York Times Magazine