The anarchy of living with negativity. Issue 5 (2nd September 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Grassi, Samuele
• Is Part Of: Continuum. Volume 30:Issue 5(2016)
• Page Start: 587
• Page End: 599
• Publication Date: 2016-09-02
• Subjects: Motion pictures -- Australia -- Periodicals; Broadcasting -- Australia -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Periodicals; 306.05
• DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2016.1210807
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1030-4312

Abstract

Abstract: The unanticipated affinities between Lee Edelman's 'politics of negativity' and Saul Neman's theorizations of an 'anti-political politics' of postanarchism allow a re-thinking of the import of queer antisocial projects for a queer politics where 'anarchy' and 'queer' combine. This paper explores a queer anti-political politics of negativity to destabilize the creativity–negativity debate, and to track the emergence of what I call an 'anti-utopian utopianism'. As shown by the 2013 anti-government die-in performance of the Israeli queer anarchist group Mashpritzot, this (im)possible project casts the 'no' of negativity, anarchy and queer as non-essentialist grounds for a politics of difference that insists on the present of dissent as precondition for (its) survival.