power failure: the queer ethics of rhetoric
DESCRIPTION
Presented February 16, 2013 at "Failure," The Midwest Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference in Milwaukee.TRANSCRIPT
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Power Failure: the Queer Ethics of Rhetoric
by Kendall Joy GerdesMIGC 2013: “Failure”
February 16, Milwaukee
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Emmanuel Levinas
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“Telephone,” anyone?
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It is through the condition of being a hostage that there can be pity, compassion,
pardon, and proximity in the world – even the little that there is, even the simple
“after you sir.”
– Emmanuel Levinas, “Substitution” (1968)
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rhetoricity
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static?
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power failure
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“Can we think about this refusal of self as an antiliberal act, a
revolutionary statement of pure opposition that does not rely upon the liberal gesture of
defiance but accesses another lexicon of power and speaks
another language of refusal?”
– J. Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure
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