There is No Freedom to Enjoy

The Annual Queer Theory LectureThere is No Freedom to Enjoy: Juxtaposing Harriet Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" with contemporary anti-queer discourses, this talk will interrogate the philosophical association of reason and freedom that informs our pedagogy and our politics. Against the rationality that underlies the assertion of freedom claims, psychoanalysis, as this lecture suggests, offers a queerer take on freedom--one that raises questions about how queer we're willing to be.