Abstract
This chapter offers the beginnings of a genealogy to the “lateral politics” that Lauren Berlant identifies in Cruel Optimism (2007) as a constitutive element of our present moment. Tracking back to early modern texts by Thomas More (Utopia) and Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queene), it reads Berlant’s book as offering the latest installment in a long story of otium or leisure as an ambivalently valued state of being keyed to discourses of political sovereignty and personal well-being, whose scripts we still play out today.
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Yates, J. (2017). Weird Otium . In: Bailey, A., DiGangi, M. (eds) Affect Theory and Early Modern Texts. Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56126-8_4
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