Berlant's America

Abstract: Lauren Berlant's work is well-known for its fine-grained analyses of ambivalent emotions, complex affective conditions, and contradictory political states. This essay argues that in Berlant's writing we can also discern revolutionary political desire, often expressed indirectly, as if refracted through the prism of our present social condition. He offers a reading of the film Born in Flames as an example of the kind of revolutionary desire he finds in Berlant's work.