Lauren Berlant is George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture and The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, both also published by Duke University Press, as well as The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life. She the editor of the books Intimacy ; Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion; and (with Lisa Duggan) Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and National Interest.
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction. Affect in the Present 1
1. Cruel Optimism 23
2. Intuitionists: History and the Affective Event 51
3. Slow Death (Obesity, Sovereignty, Lateral Agency) 95
4. Two Girls, Fat and Thin 121
5. Nearly Utopian, Nearly Normal: Post-Fordist Affect in La Promese and
Rosetta 161
6. After the Good Life, an Impasse: Time Out, Human Resources, and the
Precrious Present 191
7. On the Desire for the Political 223
Note on the Cover Image: If Body: Riva and Zora in Middle Age 265
Notes 269
Bibliography 303
Index 327
