Leftovers

Heather Love, “Leftovers: Queer Historical Feelings” “Leftovers” will situate the turn to affect among some recent theorists in relation to the exhaustion of the essentialism/constructivism debate in queer history. The talk will consider the value of a non-psychoanalytic, descriptive account of emotion in accounting for queer historical experience in the twentieth century. Drawing on recent work in queer historiography as well as critical/activist projects like the Public Feelings collective, Love will consider a few examples of fugitive, everyday, hard to capture feelings like dullness, confusion, and frustration in queer texts and their relevance to contemporary politics.