On the Inconvenience of Other People

Theorist Berlant (Cruel Optimism) (1957–2021) examines “the overcloseness of the world and how we live it” in this sharp collection. In a series of three “assays” plus a coda (an assay “tests things out, tries out various approaches...”), Berlant explores “alternative ways of being inconvenient and living with inconvenience” while “feel[ing] out how to create other kinds of social relation from within the world that needs disturbing.” “Sex in the Event of Happiness” uses films to ask such questions as “How can a sex-positive person remain thoughtfully so given the pervasiveness of sexual violence?”—while “The Commons: Infrastructures for Troubling Times” investigates what the word we means in times of upheaval, as during the Covid-19 pandemic. References to Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, Isherwood’s A Single Man, and Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely help Berlant develop the concept of “inconvenience,” explaining it as “the affective sense of the familiar friction of being in relation” and arguing that inconvenience can prompt “navigating and generating change from within the long broken and fractious middle of life.” The author is as sharp as ever at drawing from postcolonial, queer, and affect theory. Fans of Berlant’s bright, electrifying thinking will want to check this out. (Sept.)