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).

Mari Ruti's is among the most singular and significant voices in theoretical writing today. Her latest book, aptly named, condenses and refines her most recent thinking on the conflictual intersections between Lacanian political theory, affect theory, queer theory, and feminism, providing indispensable reflections on questions of ethics and agency, defiance and desire, the particularities of suffering and the precarities of love. Ruti calls her field 'progressive critical theory, broadly understood,' and Distillations demonstrates that no one understands this field more broadly, and more acutely, than she.

• AcknowledgmentsAuthor's NoteIntroduction1. The Posthumanist Universal: Between Precarity and Rebellion2. The Bad Habits of Critical Theory: On the Rigid Rituals of Thought3. Why Some Things Matter More than Others: A Lacanian Explanation4. Rupture or Resignation? Lacanian Political Theory vs. Affect Theory5. Socrates's Mistake: Lacanians on Love, Lacan on Agálmata8. Is Suffering an Event? Badiou between Nietzsche and FreudBibliography Index

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).

Mari Ruti's is among the most singular and significant voices in theoretical writing today. Her latest book, aptly named, condenses and refines her most recent thinking on the conflictual intersections between Lacanian political theory, affect theory, queer theory, and feminism, providing indispensable reflections on questions of ethics and agency, defiance and desire, the particularities of suffering and the precarities of love. Ruti calls her field 'progressive critical theory, broadly understood,' and Distillations demonstrates that no one understands this field more broadly, and more acutely, than she.

• AcknowledgmentsAuthor's NoteIntroduction1. The Posthumanist Universal: Between Precarity and Rebellion2. The Bad Habits of Critical Theory: On the Rigid Rituals of Thought3. Why Some Things Matter More than Others: A Lacanian Explanation4. Rupture or Resignation? Lacanian Political Theory vs. Affect Theory5. Socrates's Mistake: Lacanians on Love, Lacan on Agálmata8. Is Suffering an Event? Badiou between Nietzsche and FreudBibliography Index