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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
List of contents
Foreword: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey / E. Patrick Johnson vii
Introduction: A Theory of the Long Term / Scott Herring and Lee Wallace 1
1. Committed to the End: On Caretaking, Rereading, and Queer Theory / Elizabeth Freeman 25
2. Loss and the Long Term / Amy Villarejo 46
3. Unhealthy Attachments: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Commitment to Endure / Sally R. Munt 63
4. A Lifetime of Drugs / Kane Race 89
5. Death Do Us Part / Carla Freccero 117
6. Never Better: Queer Commitment Phobia in Hanya Yanagihara's
A Little Life / Scott Herring 134
7. Race, Incarceration, and the Commitment of Volunteer / Amy Jamgochian 155
8. The Color of Kinship: Race, Biology, and Queer Reproduction / Jaya Keaney 175
9. Toward a Political Economy of the Long Term / Lisa Adkins and Maryanne Dever 199
10. Serial Commitment, or, 100 Ways to Leave Your Lover / Annemarie Jagose and Lee Wallace 223
11. The Long Run / Heather Love 250
Contributors 267
Index 271
About the author
Scott Herring is Professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University and author of
The Hoarders: Material Deviance in Modern American Culture.
Lee Wallace is Associate Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney and author of
Reattachment Theory: Queer Cinema of Remarriage, also published by Duke University Press.
E. Patrick Johnson is Annenberg University Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University.
Summary
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.
