Queerpess

ALT Fails
Rejection of hope are perceived as a heteronormative affect means that hope is
key even if queer resistance fail.
HALL 2014 (Kim, prof in the department of philosophy and religion, appalacian state university, “No
Failure: Climate Change, Radical Hope, and Queer Crip Feminist Eco-Futures,” Radical Philosophy Review
17:1)

If queer is by definition a failed identity with no future, is there any non-naive way in which there
could be hope for queers? Could this hope be radical? I certainly appreciate Halberstam's point and agree that queer has
been associated with failure to achieve heteronormative happiness and suc- cess. Nonetheless, I am concerned that
embracing failure leaves only a reactionary role for queer resistance . In other words, queer
resistance, when understood as failure, becomes a mere rejection of hope, which is under-
stood as only a heteronormative affect. Because this ultimately limited con- ception of queer
resistance does not reflect our naturecultural being in the world , it is unable to address how
modes of life and thinking among global elites have contributed to a toxic environment for human and
nonhuman bodies and communities .

(Edelman’s) rejection of the future is worse for fighting oppression

SEYMOUR 2013 (Nicole, Asst. prof of English at CSU Fullerton, Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy,
and the Queer Ecological Imagination)

The anti-social thesis has also led some queer theorists to critique futurity , which just so happens to
be a fundamental rhetoric of environmentalism at large. Edelman’s No Future is now (in) famous
for its takedown of “reproduc- tive futurism ,” which entails the staging of politics and reality itself through the figure of “the
Child.” In the PMLA roundtable on the anti-social thesis, Edelman observed that one question dominated the roundtable discussion: “ do

our narratives of political efficacy, historicist analysis, and pedagogical practice naturalize what
No Future designates as reproductive futurism , thus compelling us all, regardless of political affiliation or critical method, to
prostrate ourselves at the altar of what I call the Futurch?” (821, my em- phasis). Aside from the fact that Edelman hereby shows an

attunement to the processes that determine what counts as natural, his question leaves no
room for any consideration of futurity qua the planet and its resources.5 Again, a deep suspicion of all that is deemed natural
abides. This is not to say that Edelman’s critique of reproductive futurism can- not be put to ecological use. For one thing, it certainly has the potential
to spark objections to environmental agendas grounded in heterosexist, pro-reproductive rhetoric. In a recent course I taught on queer theory and
ecocriticism, I juxtaposed images targeted in No Future—Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, for one—with images from the many environ-
mental campaigns that use the image of the child. The latter included the Environment Illinois ad cited in my preface and the logo of the World Health
Organization Europe, which features a feminized figure atop a globe, hold- ing the hand of a childlike figure, with the heading “The Future for Our
Children.” Such sentimentalized rhetoric, as my students and I discussed, suggests that
concern for the future qua the planet
can only emerge, or emerges most effectively, from white, heterosexual, familial reproductivity .
Moreover, it potentially privatizes issues of environmental health by locating them within that domestic
framework, rather than tracing them to larger structures such as racism and classism , which
make for unequal distributions of risk .4 But despite this potential of the queer critique of futurism and
futurity to function for anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-sexist environmentalist ends, it still proves
problematic on many levels. For one thing, while Edelman cri- tiques capitalism in his PMLA comments,
he fails to acknowledge that, more often than not, it is corporate and governmental disregard
for the future that enables the (paradoxical) reproduction of capital, and, more specifically, environmental
degradation and destruction in the name of capital accumula- tion.
 Skepticism good

(Perm)Queer skepticism is good, not just a wholesale rejection of the future

SEYMOUR 2013 (Nicole, Asst. prof of English at CSU Fullerton, Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy,
and the Queer Ecological Imagination)

I thus claim that sexuality is a central vector through which humans understand the non-human world,
while stressing that that vector cannot be isolated from other concerns . I otter such reading practices as a
means of identifying queer texts that might not otherwise seem environmental but that espouse

environmental justice and/or social-justice values; these reading practices could be ap- plied, conversely, to environmental texts that might
not otherwise seem queer but that denounce forms of inequality that intersect with transphobia or homophobia. I thereby suggest that “nature
writing” and “ecocinema” might be even more expansive categories than ecocritics and other scholars have previously thought: if, as I show,
naturalization is a process that oper- ates on both humans and the non-human world, then
queer texts that ask what counts as natural in terms of gender and sexuality can help us inter-
rogate what counts as natural in other senses and contexts . I thus follow Katie Hogan’s belief that “queer
skepticism is good for queers, nature, and environmentalism”—and, I would add, people of
color and economically disadvantaged people—“because it questions how all of these terms can
be put to use in harmful ways” (“Undoing Nature” 250). The skepticism found in queer fictions toward
that which dominant forces deem “natural” could help us see , to take just one example, the disingenuousness of
categorizing Hurricane Katrina as a “natural disaster,” when in fact most of its greatest harms resulted from social

inequalities.
 Optimism good

Queer optimism is a necessary condition for a queer ecology—we have to

embrace the possibility of change for the better to develop empathy for those
in and outside of our species—critiquing success as heteronormative
undermines a transformative politics
SEYMOUR 2013 (Nicole, Asst. prof of English at CSU Fullerton, Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy,
and the Queer Ecological Imagination)
But this book doesn’t just take issue with queer-theoretical ideas; it at- tempts to adapt some and put them to use in the framework
of an anti- racist, -classist, and -sexist queer ecology. For example, I am taken with how Munoz calls anti-utopianism and anti-
relationality “failures of imagi- nation” (“ThinkingBeyond” 825), and with how he suggests that we might use the past and the future
to combat the kind of here-and-now logic that allows capitalism, among other things, to flourish. I would insist that there are
ways of thinking about the here and now that are, in fact, crucial: the belief that environmental
devastation is a possibility, rather than a current and impending reality, or that we have to clean up the planet for future gen-
erations, rather than for present ones, allows
for the kind of complacency that authorizes such degradation
in the first place. But Munoz’s idea of queer utopianism, outlined more extensively in his recent book-length study
Cruising Utopia (2010), could inspire environmentalist agendas that seek to achieve positive ends without
resorting to heterosexist, homopho- bic, or pro-reproductive ideologies . Similarly, Tim Dean theorizes
queer utopia by noting that the “plunge into an experience of the nonrelational represents but the first step in Bersani’s account of
relationality. The sec- ond, correlative step is to trace new forms of sociability, new ways of be- ing together, that are not grounded
in imaginary identity or the struggle for intersubjective recognition” (827). Dean is talking about new ways of humans being
together, whereas ecologists, and of course this book, talk about humans and the non-human world. But the novels and films I look
at in Strange Natures
employ these same understandings of ontology and “being together”: they
show how humans might interact with non-humans in empathetic and ethical ways despite their
irresolvable differences. Munoz’s phrase, “failures of imagination,” is also particularly perti- nent to this book. I
argue that the texts in my archive represent remark- able achievements of imagination, achievements that have much to offer to
both queer theory and ecocriticism, as well as to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (GLBTQI) politics, and
environmentalism more broadly. They allow
us to think beyond the stalemates and impasses described
above, suggesting that there are ways to care about the natural, ways to expand the social, and
ways to think about the future, that are not heteronormative . Indeed, this book suggests that, with a queer
ecological perspective attuned to social justice, we can learn to care about the future of the planet in a way that is perhaps more
radical than any we have seen previously: acting in the interests of nameless, faceless individuals to which one has no biological,
familial, or economic ties whatsoever. This kind of action operates without any reward, without any guarantee of success, and
without any proof that potential future inhabitants of the planet might be similar to the individual acting in the present—in terms of
social identity, morality, or even species, if some doomsday predictions are to be believed. It is invested in the ends (survival of the
non-human alongside the human) but emphasizes the means (caring for the non-human alongside the hu- man). Chapter 2, for
instance, highlights how the characters in Mootoo’s novel focus on the present and ongoing well-being of a night-blooming cereus
plant and a late-blooming transgender character—rather than on the specific end results of their transformations. Queer theorist
Michael Snediker’s concept of “queer optimism, "proffered in his recent book of the same name, is also inspirational to me here.
While Snediker turns to lyric poetry to rethink heteronormative futurity, I have, of course, turned to contemporary queer novels and
films that engage with the natural world. But his concept speaks directly to the understandings of time and care that my archive puts
forth; as he declares, “[q]
ueer optimism ... is not promissory. It doesn’t ask that some future time
make good on its own hopes. Rather, queer optimism asks that optimism, embedded in its own
immanent present, might be interesting ” (2). I take Snediker’s term “interesting” to mean both something that draws
one’s attention (“interest- ing” as in “fascinating”) and something that inspires care (“interesting” as in “provoking interest or
investment”). Queeroptimism, then, is definitely not valuable because one can gain something by it.
But it’s also not valuable “in and of itself, ” because there is no such thing as value without a
valuer. Rather, its value is determined by the communal and empathetie process of valuing.
That is precisely the kind of ethical model that the texts in my archive offer for our encounters
with the non-human.
 State/Dem Engagement Good

Engaging the state through the instruments of representative democracy is the

only way to establish ecological democracy and only the state system allows us
to confront international environmental problems
ECKERSLEY 2004 (Robyn, Professor and Head of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne,
The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty)

A serious question, however, remains: How far can we expect green states to proliferate in world where there is a growing disparity
in wealth and capacity within and especially between states? As Andrew Hurrell has argued, “many of the most serious obstacles to
sustainability have to do with the domestic weaknesses of particular states and state structures.” 7 It is no accident that the
processes of ecological modernization have been spearheaded in the developed world. Moreover, while most of the richer states
are active shapers of economic globalization, there are many more developing states that are more often aggrieved victims of these
processes. These problems are not just the legacy of colonialism but also the result of an international, neoliberal economic order
that systematically disadvantages the developing world vis-à-vis the developed world. There is always reason to hope but little
reason to expect that those states sponsoring technical forms of ecological modernization will be detained by the fact that a
majority of states are not even in a position to sponsor such a green competitive strategy for their local industries. This state of
affairs is unacceptable and represents the most serious chal- lenge to global sustainability. However,
both hope and
expectations can be raised to the extent to which the economically privileged states pursue
deeper, more reflexive strategies of ecological modernization, which in turn presupposes a move toward ecological
democracy, since they would necessarily become more preoccupied with both global environmental and economic justice. There
are, of course, no encouraging signs that the most powerful states—above all, the United States
under the second Bush administration— are moving in this direction. Yet the degree of global
interdependence is now such that even superpowers need the cooperation of other states in
the longer run. This is the so-called paradox of American power outlined by Joseph Nye, which he argues must lead away from
the assertion of “hard power” and toward the practice of “soft power” (including a greater preparedness to act multilaterally).8
However, this can only be the beginning. Without
the deepening of democracy within the most privileged
states (and especially the United States), the prospects of structural reform to the international
economy, an end to the displacement of environmental problems and the beginning of concerted (as distinct from tokenistic)
environmental capacity building in the developing world seem remote. As Robert Paehkle puts it, “Irony of ironies, the route to
global governance lies in making the wealthy nations more democratic.”9 Although I have argued that green public spheres are a
condition precedent for the emergence of green democratic states, such states will not materialize or proliferate without political
leadership, whether from green parties, social democratic parties, or other social actors. This applies most obviously to elected
governments that actively seek to pursue a green agenda, such as the Swedish Social Democratic Party under the leadership of
Göran Persson, which embarked in 1996 on “a new and noble mission” to make Sweden an ecologically sustainable society.10
However, it also applies to other actors in the social, economic, and educational spheres who seek to activate and enhance the
state’s and society’s environmental capacity. Leadership
ought not to mean an overweening executive
aggressively rushing through a program of reform and ignoring oppositional movements or
community know-how and experience

The state is the only actor that can address ecological destruction and large-
scale inequalities—even if other actors are also important, we cannot succeed
without the state
ECKERSLEY 2004 (Robyn, Professor and Head of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, The
Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty)
Of course, it
would be unhelpful to become singularly fixated on the redesign of the state at the
expense of other institutions of governance . States are not the only institutions that limit, condition, shape, and direct political
power, and it is necessary to keep in view the broader spectrum of formal and informal institutions of governance (e.g., local, national, regional, and
international) that are implicated in global environmental change. Nonetheless, while the state constitutes only one
modality of political power, it is an especially significant one because of its historical claims to
exclusive rule over territory and peoples—as expressed in the principle of state sovereignty. As Gianfranco Poggi explains, the political power
concentrated in the state “is a momentous, pervasive, critical phenomenon. Together with other forms of social power, it constitutes an

indispensable medium for constructing and shaping larger social realities, for establishing,
shaping and maintaining all broader and more durable collectivities .”12 States play, in varying degrees,
significant roles in structuring life chances, in distributing wealth, privilege, information, and
risks, in upholding civil and political rights, and in securing private property rights and providing
the legal/regulatory framework for capitalism. Every one of these dimensions of state activity
has, for good or ill, a significant bearing on the global environmental crisis. Given that the green
political project is one that demands far-reaching changes to both economies and societies, it is
difficult to imagine how such changes might occur on the kind of scale that is needed without
the active support of states. While it is often observed that states are too big to deal with local ecological problems and too small to
deal with global ones, the state nonetheless holds, as Lennart Lundqvist puts it, “a unique position in the constitutive

hierarchy from individuals through villages, regions and nations all the way to global organizations. The state is inclusive of lower
political and administrative levels, and exclusive in speaking for its whole territory and
population in relation to the outside world .”13 In short, it seems to me inconceivable to advance
ecological emancipation without also engaging with and seeking to transform state pow er.

Only debates about state policy can confront social injustice, nuclear war, and
environmental destruction
ECKERSLEY 2004 (Robyn, Professor and Head of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, The
Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty)

While acknowledging the basis for this antipathy toward the nationstate, and the limitations of state-centric analyses of global
ecological degradation, I seek to draw attention to the positive role that states have played, and might increasingly play, in global
and domestic politics. Writing more than twenty years ago, Hedley Bull (a proto-constructivist and leading writer in the English
school) outlined the
state’s positive role in world affairs, and his arguments continue to provide a
powerful challenge to those who somehow seek to “get beyond the state,” as if such a move
would provide a more lasting solution to the threat of armed conflict or nuclear war, social and
economic injustice, or environmental degradation.10 As Bull argued, given that the state is here to stay
whether we like it or not, then the call to get “beyond the state is a counsel of despair, at all
events if it means that we have to begin by abolishing or subverting the state, rather than that
there is a need to build upon it.”11 In any event, rejecting the “statist frame” of world politics ought
not prohibit an inquiry into the emancipatory potential of the state as a crucial “node” in any
future network of global ecological governance. This is especially so, given that one can expect states to
persist as major sites of social and political power
 AT cooption

Our alternative solves cooptation—we change the ambit of state concern to

make it responsive to radical democracy
ECKERSLEY 2004 (Robyn, Professor and Head of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, The
Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty)

While Dryzek rightly alerts all critical theorists to the dangers of state cooptation of social movements,
his conclusions must be read in the context of his preoccupation with maintaining the vibrancy of civil society
and the public sphere against a rather limited conceptualization of the state as “the administrative state”

driven by systemic imperatives. Yet state imperatives are not autonomous from civil society and there is nothing fixed
or inevitable about their functions and goals . Rather they are produced and reproduced by the
relationships and understandings that are forged , inter alia, between state and civil society actors. So-
called state imperatives are, after all, merely reified social relations, practices, and understandings.

The point, then (contra Dryzek), is to challenge those relationships, practices, and understandings that
are not environmentally inclusive and to work toward making the settings in which they are forged less
distorted from the point of view of ecological democracy . To the extent to which this occurs, the zone of
policy discretion can be expected to open up (or at least be less “imprisoned”), and we can also expect the
goals and functions of states to change. Dryzek himself notes that state imperatives have changed, or rather
expanded, over time in response to societal problems and the claims of social movements , and nowadays
it is possible to recognize environmental conservation as a new state imperative, at least in the form of ecological modernization.71

However, these must be ultimately understood as political and socially negotiated changes involving political contestation, not autonomous changes in
response to objective systemic imperatives. Whereas Dryzek’s overriding concern is to maintain a vibrant civil society and public sphere, the concern in
this inquiry is broader: How might we enhance state reflexivity or ecological problem-solving capacity?
This is the same as asking: How might the communicative context become less distorted and more

inclusive? Dryzek’s empirical observation that “passively exclusively states” tend to prompt oppositional movements should not be taken as an
argument for avoiding engagement with the state, although it does warn of the dangers of unthinking strategies of inclusion. The point, as I see it,

is to make the democratic state more responsive to such critical feedback, acknowledging the
crucial role played by civil society actors and public spheres in the processes of problem
detection. The goal should not be to eliminate the unavoidable and necessary tensions between
civil society and the state. Rather, it should be to explore how they might be played out in more
creative ways, particularly for those groups that have historically been excluded or marginalized
in the processes of policy making.
 PUAR BAD
Puar’s analysis is shallow and wrong

McCORMACK 09
(JEN McCORMACK is the Geography and Regional Development of University of Arizona; “Book
Reviews”, 7/23/18, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1467-
8330.2009.00688_1.x, DMW)

But for all its

gusto, Puar’s
emphasis on
critique at t
But for all its gusto, Puar’s emphasis on critique at times becomes a limitation. Despite the length of individual
chapters and the depth of engagement with theoretical debates, Terrorist Assemblages is thinner on focused analysis. Much detail
of events of the empirical world appears in footnotes, if at all, and Puar sometimes moves too quickly from concept to concept
without thinking through their particular genealogies or developing their critical potential. For instance, early in the text, she
argues that we need a new way of conceptualizing governmentality in terms of simultaneity
rather than sequence—in other words, geographically. She proposes a “new” concept: environ
mentality. However intriguing, this concept is not entirely new (see Agrawal 2005), and Puar also neglects a
large, vibrant literature on governmentalit y within the geography literature that has debated these
questions formore than a decade. Puar hardly even returns to this concept of
“environmentality” in the text, and indeed, such a provocative concept does not earn an entry in
the index. This sort of thing happens repeatedly, often with regards to concepts that have salience in geographical debates, and
could be a source of frustration fora geography readership. In Chapter 3, Puar endorses Mary Pat Brady’s claim that “spatial
analysis” has not “considered the degree to which the construction of race and sexuality” abets
distinctions between public and private, or the way in which “the obverse operates as well,
because spatial distinctions help to structure sexuality, race, and class ”.
Perm solves and Puar is Wrong
Carroll 13

(James has B.A. in political science. As a connoisseur of all things queer, sarcastic, and sublime,
James is always ready to have his worldview challenged by his adversaries, and expects the
same respect from all of his readers; “THE LEFT’S NEW ISLAMOPHILIC HOMOPHOBIA: BOOK
REVIEW OF “TERRORIST ASSEMBLAGES”, 7/23/18,
https://appliedsentience.com/2013/08/23/the-lefts-new-islamophilic-homophobia-book-
review-of-terrorist-assemblages/, DMW)

Puar’s bird’s-eye view of the situation (and how could it not be so, when dealing with such big issues of war and
peace?) is still firmly seated within the “Clash of Civilizations” tradition, which posits cultures as static, outwardly oppositional and
internally consolidated. In reality, the
acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people into
the American mainstream is an incomplete process . The idea of a progressive sexual politics as
part of an “American” or a “British” nationalism is quite novel and controversia l, having many
detractors in the conservative camp and needing no more from self-proclaimed feminists. It might
be unfortunate for the Taliban that the “Taliban” brand has become synonymous with brutishness, thuggery, and misogyny. They are
indeed victims of war propaganda, and perhaps they have some thoughtful critiques of U.S. imperialism that are not being heard. But
this zeitgeist is an unalloyed good for LGBT people in friendly-to-ambivalent countries, where they can exploit the semiotics of
empire to attack, for example, the “Christian Taliban”, when a closer church engages in multi-million dollar campaigns against the
civil rights of sexual minorities. On the other hand, it
makes no sense for a LGBT person who is not already
predisposed to radical politics to align himself with Islamists . Racial groups, sure: the Japanese
American Citizens League, lest we forget, was the first American non-gay organization to
endorse marriage equality, in 1994. But a queer-Muslim nexus makes about as much sense as an
alliance between the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun
Violence. While gay-rights groups make up for small numbers by conscripting generalized social
justice advocates, Islamic organizations can afford the luxury of parochialism.