Lauren Berlant with Michael Dango

In this episode, Juliette Marchant is joined by Michael Dango, Associate Professor of English at Rice University, to discuss the work of Lauren Berlant: an interdisciplinary theorist of affect, intimacy, and political life, and one of the most original and influential thinkers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.Together, they trace Berlant’s intellectual arc, from their earlywork on national fantasy and citizenship to later writings on affect, precarity, and the ordinary, while reflecting on the attachments and everyday forms through which political life is lived. From The Anatomy of National Fantasy and The Queen of America Goes to Washington City to Cruel Optimism, the conversation highlights Berlant’s distinctive method and the enduring force of concepts that illuminate how what sustains us can also hold us in place.Texts Referenced in the Episode:The Queen of America Goes to Washington City - Lauren BerlantThe Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life - Lauren BerlantThe Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture - Lauren BerlantCruel Optimism - Lauren BerlantOn the Inconvenience of Other People - Lauren BerlantSex in Public - Lauren Berlant and Michael WarnerGenre Flailing - Lauren BerlantCrisis Style: The Aesthetics of Repair - Michael DangoMadonna's Erotica - Michael Dango