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What better represents Berlant’s archaic “good life” fantasy than homeownership? At the core of the 2008 financial crisis we find this contradictory arrangement: American society is unwilling to pay enough to significant numbers of its citizens for them to buy houses, yet also unwilling to live wit…

There is a world in which the story is this: you commit yourself to one person after another, a man and then a woman, a woman and then a man, for balance, and when you are with a man, you cheat with a woman, and when you are with a woman, you cheat with a man. And then you find this woman, and some…

This is massively unhelpful, of course. Since even if there is a universe for each possible version of your life — the one in which you make a singular marriage, the one in which you’re restless and wild and free, and all the others — you’re trapped in this one; knowing they’re happening, right now…

It was hard to make out the lines by candlelight. I held her hand close to my face and touched the inside of her palm. She giggled. Carla has always been ticklish. Once I saw her kick a Korean lady in the face during a pedicure. She didn’t mean to do it, but when the lady started scrubbing the sole…

This was a problem I had faced before. In college I babysat for a philosophy professor named Talia who had adopted a little girl from China. She needed a regular babysitter because most weekends her dog traveled to compete in obstacle courses against other dogs. The dog was an excellent competitor …