Exigent Sadism

Abstract This article arises from an ethical curiosity about why individuals do not resist state violence, ethnonationalist escalations, and the rise of fascism and is driven by the urgency for theory with teeth—theory, that is, that can move us toward the action of resistance. Suggesting that a type of logic called austerity thinking underwrites the tendency to guard the self, the author claims that, when it comes to revolutionary actions, what depletes and impoverishes us is not spending ourselves down (expenditure) but the unwillingness to risk ourselves. Thinking with psychoanalysis's economic model, with political theory, and with queer of color critique, she argues that we are already in the midst of an antireparative turn that we must fully embrace. The reparative, discussed here as a powerful moralizing and counterinsurgency tactic, engineers our own obedience, disciplining us into preserving relations come what may. To refuse repair's illusory promises is to accept the risks that accompany libidinal divestment. And it is also to sign up for forms of aggression that, to its detriment, the Left has felt all too squeamish about. By making an argument for the complexity of sadism in general, and for the urgency of exigent sadism in particular, the author takes up the relations among libidinality, risk, and revolutionary change. This article offers theory made not only for thinking but also, and especially, for action.