Dr. Eric Stanley talk: “Is Love a Necessary Revolutionary Affect? Gay Shame, Queer Hate & Direct Action in Silicon Valley” on May 14

On Tuesday, May 14, the Women's & Gender Studies Department presents a talk by Dr. Eric Stanley (they/them) entitled, "Is Love a Necessary Revolutionary Affect? Gay Shame, Queer Hate & Direct Action in Silicon Valley" at 4:40 p.m. in the ATL (Bldg. 7).

Talk Description:

"What forms of collectivity might be built against the drives of settler-sovereignty in Silicon Valley and is love a necessary revolutionary affect for this work? Grounded in Indigenous critiques of the commons, Dr. Stanley offers a reading of Gay Shame, a queer direct action group based in San Francisco, and its work confronting the hypergentrification of the Bay Area propelled by the tech industry. Describing itself as, “a virus in the system,” Gay Shame utilizes its collective “bad attitudes” to “instigate, irritate, and agitate to build cultures of devastating resistance.” Dr. Stanley argues that Gay Shame’s negative relationality shows the ways in which the Left’s focus on love as a revolutionary affect actually accelerates racial capitalism’s motors of accumulation and dispossession – and how queer hate functions as an alternative."

Dr. Eric Stanley is an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. They are also affiliated with the Haas LGBTQ Citizenship Research Cluster and the Program in Critical Theory.

Sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts Lottery Fund. Free & open to the public. Classes welcome. Extra Credit eligible.

Have a question? Please contact Dr. Lehr.

Download the event flyer.