On the Inconvenience of Other People

Lauren Berlant (1957–2021) was George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor of English at the University of Chicago and the author and coauthor of many books, including The Queen of America Goes to Washington City; The Female Complaint; Cruel Optimism; Sex, or the Unbearable; and The Hundreds, all also published by Duke University Press.

"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." (Publishers Weekly) "In Inconvenience, that pedagogy is sly, confiding, and digressive. . . . On the Inconvenience of Other People is, finally, a book in all its feels-from happiness to a death wish-all at once. And it’s the last work of a scholar whose theory felt personal, and whose death was mourned far beyond those who knew Berlant: a perfect encapsulation of intimacy within publicity and the publicity of intimacy, a monument to their very work." - Hannah Zeavin (Bookforum) "A coherent and helpful addition to the ideas, now influential throughout the culture, that Berlant wrought in 2011’s Cruel Optimism." - Jo Livingstone (4Columns) "Offers moments of stunning clarity with the kinds of pithy declarative revelations that can easily spiral a reader toward an entirely new outlook on life. Their writing is a paragon of world-breaking and world-making insight." - Megan Volpert (Popmatters) "Berlant was anything but ordinary. They wanted their writing to draw the reader into the unpredictability of their own mind. . . . Berlant asked the reader to remain in the thought with them, accepting its formlessness and volatility. Writing was a race against life. . . . The breathlessness was left intact in the prose. If the result is that one sometimes comes away from Berlant’s books with only an impressionistic understanding, that might be an appropriate response to a theorist of vibes." - Erin Maglaque (London Review of Books) "A book about proceeding in brokenness, On The Inconvenience of Other People is simultaneously an experiment, if not a map, on how to do theory in a damaged world." - Lilly Markaki (LSE Review of Books) "Berlant offers brilliant insights about the progressive and regressive forces that produce, promote, and frustrate individuals' (perceived) freedoms.  Recommended. Graduate students and faculty." (Choice) "As a last book, On the Inconvenience of Other People is very pleasingly Berlantian: witty, difficult, and theoretical, with attention paid to the ordinary, fantasy, attachment, and sex through a close reading practice that feels like it turns the texts inside out. The line to the book from their previous publications is clear. You and I are left with the rich, pleasurable, inconvenient archive of thought and feeling that is Berlant’s work." - Daryl Maude (Qui Parle) "On the Inconvenience of Other People is a testament to how critical engagement with the world can be frustrating but also generative and point to 'the copresence of an otherwise' (16) and may be proof that there is a future after Lauren Berlant’s death. Although their last publication, the book is anything but final; rather, it is a road map or an invitation to imagine breaking and making the world anew." - Simone Pfleger (Seminar) "The book is rich in both content and form throughout all its sections, with Berlant cleverly interweaving different but nuanced social dynamics to invite the readers into the complexities of the world we live in. . . . A great literary and philosophical masterpiece to open us to the contradictory nature of human existence in a world of mighty opposites, where there is no straight way to life."- Joseph Mwita Kisito (Feminism & Psychology) "One of the quiet pleasures of such a book is its invitation to recognize more expansively the network of teachers who have enabled each of us-to repurpose one of Berlant’s lovelier formulas-to write beyond our own historically moth-worn personalities and the clumsy limits of our individual ordinariness." - Ana Schwartz (Early American Literature)

• Note to the Reader  viiPreface. What Now?  ixIntroduction. Intentions  11. Sex. Sex in the Event of Happiness  312. Democracy. The Commons: Infrastructures for Troubling Times  753. Life. On Being in Life without Wanting the World: No World Poetics, or, Elliptical Life  117Coda. My Dark Places  149Acknowledgments  175Notes  177Bibliography  205Index  231