The Ethics of Opting Out

Mari Ruti offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of queer theory, including debates about affect theory, subjectivity, negativity, defiance, agency, and bad feelings. She gives an accessible yet theoretically rigorous account of the political divisions that have animated the field in the last decade. In particular, Ruti argues that contemporary efforts by queer theorists to grapple with negativity and bad feelings challenge our society's normative understanding of the good life and have the potential to transform ethical theory and practice.

The role of subjectivity, defiance, agency, and affect theory in contemporary queer theoryIn The Ethics of Opting Out, Mari Ruti provides an accessible yet theoretically rigorous account of the ideological divisions that have animated queer theory during the last decade, paying particular attention to the field's rejection of dominant neoliberal narratives of success, cheerfulness, and self-actualization. More specifically, she focuses on queer negativity in the work of Lee Edelman, Jack Halberstam, and Lynne Huffer, and on the rhetoric of bad feelings found in the work of Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, David Eng, Heather Love, and Jose Munoz. Ruti highlights the ways in which queer theory's desire to opt out of normative society rewrites ethical theory and practice in genuinely innovative ways at the same time as she resists turning antinormativity into a new norm. This wide-ranging and thoughtful book maps the parameters of contemporary queer theory in order to rethink the foundational assumptions of the field.