The Bad Good Life: On the Politics of Impasse addresses the narrowness of conditions of political change. Political theorists have detailed the promise of events in sparking political change but few have examined why events occur rarely or not at all. Impediments to political change are also not fully captured by important analyses of coercion, ideology, and disciplinary power. Meanwhile, the pursuit of social justice in the United States has been at an impasse due to unresolved issues of racism, the normalization of sexuality, settler colonialism, global war, and ecological crises. The Bad Good Life addresses these theoretical and political predicaments by developing a concept of ;;impasse” from critical comparisons of political theory, American studies, feminist and queer theory, and anthropologies of ordinary life. It finds impasse to be more than a deadlock in beliefs, values, or political positions; impasse involves deeply rooted affective attachments that impede change even when it is strongly desired. The Bad Good Life clarifies how dominant political systems in the US manage to persist despite the powerful efforts of minoritized subjects to build alternative worlds. It also develops forms of politics that risk the loss of attachments even when full-bodied alternatives have yet to arise.
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