Long Term: Essays on Queer Commitment

The contributors to Long Term use the tension between the popular embrace and legalization of same-sex marriage and the queer critique of homonormativity as an opportunity to examine the myriad forms of queer commitments and their durational aspect. They consider commitment in all its guises, particularly relationships beyond and aside from monogamous partnering. These include chosen and involuntary long-term commitments to families, friends, pets, and coworkers; to the care of others and care of self; and to financial, psychiatric, and carceral institutions. Whether considering the enduring challenges of chronic illnesses and disability, including HIV and chronic fatigue syndrome; theorizing the queer family as a scene of racialized commitment; or relating the grief and loss that comes with caring for pets, the contributors demonstrate that attending to the long term offers a fuller understanding of queer engagements with intimacy, mortality, change, dependence, and care.

Contributors. Lisa Adkins, Maryanne Dever, Carla Freccero, Elizabeth Freeman, Scott Herring, Annamarie Jagose, Amy Jamgochian, E. Patrick Johnson, Jaya Keaney, Heather Love, Sally R. Munt, Kane Race, Amy Villarejo, Lee Wallace

 

 

“Every now and again an edited volume comes along and sets a new agenda for a field. This absolutely dazzling piece of scholarship is precisely such a landmark contribution. Encountering the scrambled landscape of gay life in the post-Obergefell world while grappling with the new possibilities for commitment made possible by the legalization of gay marriage, Long Term is a truly original and outstanding work.” — Benjamin Kahan, author of The Book of Minor Perverts: Sexology, Etiology, and the Emergences of Sexuality

“The essays in Long Term enter the quotidian realm of queer commitments not to settle scores with the outsized celebration of antinormativity that writes the political into prerecorded narratives of heroic refusal, but to inhabit the small acts and minor tempos that compose the work, anxiety, and yes even the pleasure of ordinary endurance. Lushly descriptive and wholly engaging, this collection is both a living document and a critically nuanced guide to the persistence of queer commitments.” — Robyn Wiegman, author of Object Lessons