Distillations ― Theory, Ethics, Affect

Distilling into concise and focused formulations many of the main ideas that Mari Ruti has sought to articulate throughout her writing career, this book reflects on the general state of contemporary theory as it relates to posthumanist ethics, political resistance, subjectivity, agency, desire, and bad feelings such as anxiety. It offers a critique of progressive theory's tendency to advance extreme models of revolt that have little real-life applicability. The chapters move fluidly between several theoretical registers, the most obvious of these being continental philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, Butlerian ethics, affect theory, and queer theory. One of the central aims of Distillations is to explore the largely uncharted territory between psychoanalysis and affect theory, which are frequently pitted against each other as hopelessly incompatible, but which Ruti shows can be brought into a productive dialogue.

Mari Ruti is Distinguished Professor of Critical Theory and of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada, and, in 2016-2017, Visiting Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University, USA (a position she also held in 2014-2015). She is the author of eleven books, including Between Levinas and Lacan (Bloomsbury, 2015), The Age of Scientific Sexism (Bloomsbury, 2015), and The Ethics of Opting Out (2017). She is co-series editor of the book series Psychoanalytic Horizons (Bloomsbury).