CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - Linn Tonstad The Impossible Other: Queer Ethics for Apocalyptic Times
In The Impossible Other, I develop a new account of queer theology as pandemic theology—a theology for pandemic times. Building on subjectless queer critique’s emergence through analyses of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the project revitalizes a critical tradition that many had left for dead by analyzing the COVID-19 pandemic. Against many queer theorists’ surprising turn to intentional agency and biopolitical management in their responses to COVID-19, The Impossible Other looks instead at the unexpected ways an encounter with the other (the risky or threatening stranger) might generate a different kind of subjectivity, marked by a passive agency whose effects are unknowable. Such a non-subjectivity reflects a negative queer ethics that accepts the ambiguities of vulnerability and the inevitability of death and loss, yet continues to look for the "better" rather than the "good."