Affect, Critique, and the Social Contract

This essay reads the social contract tradition through the lens of cruel optimism. Using Berlant’s theory to highlight the complex affective structures of promissory relations, I argue for deeper engagement with the rhetorical and affective dimensions of the contract tradition. I reveal the disavowed place of rhetoric in critical contract theory and turn to early modern political thought to recover a fugitive tradition of contract in which imaginative language appealing to affect is essential for diverse political purposes. I consider the example of racial reparations to show the expanded critical possibilities of contract-talk in the mode of claiming broken promises.