Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-18-2018
Abstract
Presenting the current mode of production as a triumvirate of capital, learning, and debt, I argue that a certain education and rhythm reinforce exploitation and domination. I propose queer communist study to break out of this regime. I first turn to Lee Edelman's polemic against reproductive futurism, which commits us to the logic of identity, meaning, and repetition. Through mining and explicating Edelman's dispersed notes on education and pedagogy, I formulate the practice of sinthomostudying, which paradoxically situates us within the gap of identity and the internal surplus of the Symbolic order. The jouissance of sinthomostudying opens up a world of potentiality, but these potentialities do not necessarily stand in antagonism to the capital-debt-learning regime. This is a necessary but insufficient educational axiom as the configurations of communicative capitalism are sustained by the disruption and instability of the drive. Thus, I ultimately posit that for queer study to be communist it must be organized into a force capable of sustaining, inhabiting, and expanding the gap of identity, thereby redirecting the death drive toward a new way of being and relating.
Recommended Citation
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by the Taylor & Francis Group in The Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy on April 18, 2018 and available online at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15505170.2018.1437575
