The (Un)Bearable Lightness of Sex

The premise of Sex, or the Unbearable is certainly appealing. Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman, two key authors in queer theory today, discuss the concept of negativity in the context of the antisocial thesis that has galvanized the field.¹ Their previous publications, Berlant's Cruel Optimism (2011) and Edelman's No Future (2004) in particular, suggest a fruitful disparity between the two, with Berlant being less pessimistic than Edelman about "what it means to seek to transform what's nonsovereign in desire and unbearable in relation" (122).² After a preface written in a shared voice ("we"), the book contains three essays in which "LB" and "LE" respond to each other's contributions in dialogue form. The first essay, "Sex without Optimism," is based on a joint paper that Berlant and Edelman presented at a 2009 conference in honor of Gayle Rubin. The second one, "What Survives," derives from another joint paper, this time delivered in 2010 at an MLA panel in memory of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. The third essay, "Living with Negativity," is new work and takes as its starting point a close reading of the short story "Break It Down" (1986) by Lydia Davis, helpfully reprinted in full. In short, all the ingredients are there for both a stocktaking of queer studies and the addition of an inventive new chapter to the discipline.

In several ways, Sex, or the Unbearable at once lives up to this promise and falls short of it. This paradox is perhaps best demonstrated regarding the book's dialogic structure. On the one hand, the frankness with which Berlant and Edelman lay bare their different strategies towards this particular way of exchanging ideas is deeply insightful. Edelman's modus operandi is to perform a deconstructive reading of Berlant's previous comments and subsequently oppose himself to her supposed argument. Meanwhile, Berlant adopts a variety of approaches, ranging from amenability—"I learned a lot from what you lay out here" (78)—via metareflection—"One of your styles of response, Lee, is to pose some version of the question 'Is x necessarily so?'" (88)—to introducing a new perspective to keep the conversation going—"Here's another walk around the situation" (90). In her afterword (there are two, one by Edelman and one by Berlant), she admits that, "often, I was feeling my way, both focused on moving the discussion forward . . . and also irritated about how I'd been characterized" (122). After three essays worth of this balancing act, Berlant finally poses Edelman the question that I suspect many queer-studies scholars have been wanting to ask him: "What would you do if I closed by saying, Okay, you win, you're right: the capacity to make new settings for occupying the irreparable rivenness of subjects and worlds is just my fantasy of the possibility of social and personal transformation?" (111). Edelman's response is revealing, summing up the conundrum of not only his own recent academic output, but of the antisocial thesis in general: rather than persuading Berlant, he would prefer to be persuaded by her, "But I don't, as yet, see proof" (115). While wanting to believe in "the possibility of social and personal transformation," then, Edelman does not allow himself the pleasure of this "fantasy." In terms of the psychoanalytic grounding of Sex, or the Unbearable, denying oneself pleasure can of course also be understood as a libidinal position. In other words, both Berlant's "fantasy of . . . transformation" and Edelman's rejection of this "fantasy" are fueled by desire. As such, Edelman here embodies the "rivenness" of the subject that is the topic of his exchange with Berlant, his scholarly work serving two opposing libidinal investments at once: he both wants and does not want to be persuaded otherwise.

On the other hand, the dialogic structure of the book obscures as much as it exposes. For all their no, you've misunderstood me's, Berlant and Edelman speak the same lingo, refer to...