Edelman’s queer theory fail’s queer white men wont bear the same burden under his model, alt modes to thinking solve and the theory Edelman bases his arguments off fail to account for contributions and impacts of specific queer modes.

Queer theory, like any intellectual enterprise, has its blind spots. It’s why Lee Edelman’s celebration of the death drive for queer subjects, as enticing as it might seem, runs into trouble for centering on white gay men, for whom there is less at stake in claiming negativity than queer people of color and queer women. Perhaps because of Ruti’s largely Lacanian frame, her analysis has some limits. To be sure, Ruti substantially engages with Sara Ahmed, Jasbir Puar, David L. Eng, and others who have been critical of the subject-centered whiteness of some strands of queer theory that embrace Lacan in particular. And yet, her book does not really focus onthe shape of the structural oppressions that are at the core of what has come to be called queer of color critique; her point is to note the contributions of queer approaches to oppression along the lines of race, sex, gender, and class, not to unpack specific observations about overlap or intersection between marginal identities and experiences. Sometimes, that feels like a disappointment. Nonetheless, a reader will learn how the relational critiques they offer can be reconciled with a Lacanian motivation to identify what is lacking and think beyond it. In that sense, I think Ruti recovers some insights from white scholars aware of their critical and empathic limitations: she observes from critics like Tim Dean and Leo Bersani that there are modes of ethical thinking that do not require total identification with different points of view in order to function. It’s possible, as Dean suggests in his study of the ethics of barebacking subculture, to call for “an impersonal ethics in which one cares about others even when one cannot see anything of oneself in them.” That impersonal ethics — one in which the limits of the imagination prompt one to learn by extending sympathy before fear — is a call for learning from and listening to one’s critics; it’s a call for an imagination beyond the frameworks that elicit sympathy in the here and now.