Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:13:23.420Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reproduction and Queer Theory: Between Lee Edelman's No Future and J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Anca Parvulescu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In a queer-theory reading of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol in the 2004 polemic No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Lee Edelman relied on a narrow concept of reproduction as procreative heteronormativity anchored in heterosexual sex. He left untold the other story of reproduction: our daily reproduction in the service of capitalism. Marxist and materialist feminist theories of reproduction remind us that we all engage in reproductive work and that women have traditionally been considered natural providers of this work. A reading of J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man, in which a male protagonist depends on the domestic labor of a migrant woman, provides a counterpoint to No Future.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 132 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 86 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation).” “Lenin and Philosophy” and Other Essays, Translated by Brewster, Ben, Monthly Review Press, 2001, pp. 85–126.Google Scholar
Anagnost, Ann S. “Strange Circulations.” Beyond Biopolitics, edited by Clough, Patricia Ticineto and Willse, Craig, Duke UP, 2011, pp. 213–37.Google Scholar
Bataille, Georges. Eroticism: Death and Sensuality. Translated by Dalwood, Mary, City Lights Publishers, 1996.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren, and Edelman, Lee. Sex; or, The Unbearable. Duke UP, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, Elizabeth. Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex. U of Chicago P, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besen-Cassino, Yasemin, and Cassino, Dan. “Division of House Chores and the Curious Case of Cooking: The Effects of Earning Inequality on House Chores among Dual-Earner Couples.” AG About Gender, vol. 4, no. 10, 2016, www.aboutgender.unige.it/index.php/generis/article/view/176.Google Scholar
Brennan, Denise. “Love Work in a Tourist Town: Dominican Sex Workers and Resort Workers Perform at Love.” Love and Globalization: Transformations of Intimacy in the Contemporary World, edited by Padilla, Mark B. et al., Vanderbilt UP, 2007, pp. 203–25.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. “Against Proper Objects.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 6, nos. 2–3, 1994, pp. 1–26.Google Scholar
Caserio, Robert L., et al. “The Antisocial Thesis in Queer Theory.” PMLA, vol. 121, no. 3, 2006, pp. 819–28.Google Scholar
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote. Translated by Raffel, Burton, W. W. Norton, 1999.Google Scholar
Cheah, Pheng. “Biopower and the New International Division of Reproductive Labor.” Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea, edited by Morris, Rosalind C., Columbia UP, 2010, pp. 179–212.Google Scholar
Chinn, Sarah, and Duane, Anna Mae, editors. Child. Special issue of Women's Studies Quarterly, general editors, Cynthia Chris and Matt Brim, vol. 43, nos. 1–2, 2015.Google Scholar
Coetzee, J. M. Diary of a Bad Year Penguin Books, 2008.Google Scholar
Coetzee, J. M. Elizabeth Costello: Fiction. Penguin Books, 2004.Google Scholar
Coetzee, J. M. Foe. Penguin Books, 1988.Google Scholar
Coetzee, J. M. Slow Man. Penguin Books, 2006.Google Scholar
Cooper, Melinda, and Waldby, Catherine. Clinical Labor: Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Bioeconomy. Duke UP, 2014.Google Scholar
Daniel, Drew. “Trading Futures: Queer Theory's Anti-antirelational Turn: Review of Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, by José Esteban Muñoz.” Criticism, vol. 52, no. 2, 2010, pp. 325–30.Google Scholar
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. W. W. Norton, 1994.Google Scholar
de Lauretis, Teresa. “Queer Texts, Bad Habits, and the Issue of a Future.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 17, nos. 2–3, 2011, pp. 243–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings. Penguin Books, 2003.Google Scholar
Dooley, Gillian. J. M. Coetzee and the Power of Narrative. Cambria Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground. Notes from the Underground and The Gambler, translated by Jane Kentish, Oxford UP, 2008, pp. 1–124.Google Scholar
Duggan, Lisa. “The New Homonormativity: The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism.” Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, edited by Castronovo, Russ and Nelson, Dana D., Duke UP, 2002, pp. 175–94.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Duke UP, 2004.Google Scholar
Eng, David. The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy. Duke UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Fink, Bruce. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Harvard UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Fisher, Mark. “No Future Together.” Frieze, no. 109, 2 Sept. 2007, frieze.com/article/no-future-together.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976. Translated by Macey, David, Picador, 2003.Google Scholar
Fraiman, Susan. Cool Men and the Second Sex. Columbia UP, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Duke UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Gill-Peterson, Julian, et al., editors. The Child Now. Special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 22, no. 4, 2016.Google Scholar
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America. Harvard UP, 2012.Google Scholar
Halberstam, J. Jack. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. NYU P, 2005.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. “Love and Gold.” Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, edited by Ehrenreich, Barbara and Hochschild, , Metropolitan Books, 2002, pp. 15–30.Google Scholar
Huffer, Lynne. Are the Lips a Grave? A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Sex. Columbia UP, 2013.Google Scholar
Jagose, Annamarie. “Feminism's Queer Theory.” Feminism and Psychology, vol. 19, no. 2, 2009, pp. 157–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kafer, Alison. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana UP, 2013.Google Scholar
Koch, Jerzy. “J. M. Coetzee in Poland.” Werkwinkel, vol. 7, no. 2, 2012, pp. 9–11.Google Scholar
Lens, Nicholas. “An Ordinary Man: An Interview with Nicholas Lens by Dorota Semenowicz.” Werkwinkel, vol. 7, no. 2, 2012, pp. 49–53.Google Scholar
Lens, Nicholas, composer. Slow Man. Libretto by J. M. Coetzee. Opera Poznań, 2012.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Translated by Jacobson, Claire and Schoepf, Brooke Grundfest, Basic Books, 1963.Google Scholar
Lyon, Janet. Manifestos: Provocations of the Modern. Cornell UP, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyonette, Clare, and Crompton, Rosemary. “Sharing the Load? Partners' Relative Earnings and the Division of Domestic Labour.” Work, Employment and Society, vol. 29, no. 1, 2015, pp. 23–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malabou, Catherine. Changing Difference. Translated by Shread, Carolyn, Polity Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Mamo, Laura. Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience. Duke UP, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manalansan, Martin F. “Queering the Chain of Care Paradigm.” S and F Online, vol. 6, no. 3, 2008, sfonline.barnard.edu/immigration/manalansan_01.htm.Google Scholar
Martin, Biddy. “Extraordinary Homosexuals and the Fear of Being Ordinary.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 6, nos. 2–3, 1994, pp. 100–25.Google Scholar
Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity NYU P, 2009.Google Scholar
Nielson, Brett. “Globalization and the Biopolitics of Aging.” CR: New Centennial Review, vol. 3, no. 2, 2003, pp. 161–86.Google Scholar
Parvulescu, Anca. “European Racial Triangulation.” Postcolonial Transitions in Europe, edited by Ponzanesi, Sandra and Colpani, Gianmaria, Rowman and Littlefield, 2015, pp. 25–46.Google Scholar
Parvulescu, Anca. “Old Europe, New Europe, Eastern Europe: Reflections on a Minor Character in Fassbinder's Ali, Fear Eats the Soul.” New Literary History, vol. 43, no. 4, 2012, pp. 727–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parvulescu, Anca. The Traffic in Women's Work: East European Migration and the Making of Europe. U of Chicago P, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Power of Women Collective. “The Home in the Hospital.” All Work and No Pay, edited by Edmond, Wendy and Fleming, Suzie, Falling Wall, 1975, pp. 69–89.Google Scholar
Romero, Mary. “Unraveling Privilege: Workers' Children and the Hidden Costs of Paid Childcare.” Chicago-Kent Law Review, vol. 76, no. 3, 2001, pp. 1651–72.
Rose, Nikolas. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. “Blood under the Bridge: Reflections on ”Thinking Sex.'“ GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 2011, pp. 15–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. “Sexual Traffic.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 6, nos. 2–3, 1994, pp. 62–99.Google Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality.” Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, edited by Vance, Carole S., Pandora Press, 1984, pp. 267–319.Google Scholar
Rubin, Gayle. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by Reiter, Rayna R., Monthly Review Press, 1975, pp. 157–210.Google Scholar
Ruti, Mari. “Why There Is Always a Future in the Future.” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 13, no. 1, Apr. 2008, pp. 113–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “The Global Traffic in Human Organs.” Current Anthropology, vol. 41, no. 2, 2000, pp. 191–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Lie Down in the Karoo: An Antidote to the Anthropocene.” Public Books, 1 June 2014, www.publicbooks.org/fiction/lie-down-in-the-karoo-an-antidote-to-the-anthropocene.Google Scholar
Waldby, Catherine, and Cooper, Melinda. “From Reproductive to Regenerative Labour: The Female Body and the Stem Cell Industries.” Feminist Theory, vol. 11, no. 1, 2010, pp. 3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walkowitz, Rebecca L. “Comparison Literature.” Comparison, edited by Felski, Rita and Friedman, Susan Stanford, Johns Hopkins UP, 2013, pp. 235–52.Google Scholar
Wiegman, Robyn. “The Times We're In: Queer Feminist Criticism and the Reparative ‘Turn.‘” Feminist Theory, vol. 15, no. 1, 2014, pp. 5–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiegman, Robyn, and Wilson, Elizabeth, editors. Queer Theory without Antinormativity. Special issue of Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, 2015.Google Scholar