Disturbing Attachments

“Kadji Amin has written a crucial book, one that no one invested in queer thought or queer history can ignore. Elaborated through a reading of Jean Genet’s pederastic and cross-racial desires, Disturbing Attachments reflects on the permanent dissonance between politics and erotic and psychic life. Amin explores the contradictions of queer studies, which pairs its commitment to radical anti-normativity with a commitment to world-building, and argues that the field must deidealize without abandoning its attachments to queer coalition.” - Heather Love, author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History

“Kadji Amin upends foundational presumptions in queer theory by grappling with the passionate attachments that tether queer studies to the radical French writer Jean Genet. The resulting discomfort allows us to think differently about theory, politics, and queer relationships.” - Todd Shepard, author of The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France

"Queer studies desperately needs this book. Cogent, timely, and pathbreaking, Kadji Amin's work disrupts the genealogies of queer attachments while simultaneously interrogating, and at times relentlessly, the shape of the political in queer theory and the idealization of the queer erotic." - Sharon Patricia Holland, author of The Erotic Life of Racism

"Amin's commitment to re-evaluating the unsettling practices of Genet's life represents a serious attempt to contend with the colonial, racist, and hierarchical legacies present in queer social forms. . . . Disturbing Attachments, by investigating the traction queer theory can have in contending with the compromises and failures hidden within its own field, demonstrates the potential for critical self-inquiry." - Rajat D. Singh, Gay & Lesbian Review

"An interesting and thought-provoking book on the relationship between modern pederasty and queer history. . . . The book’s most useful insight is at a theoretical level: recognizing that a non-normative sexuality can be complicit with oppressive power structures in other respects, it places a welcome emphasis on the existence of an irreducible tension between the erotic and the political." - Mairéad Hanrahan, H-France, H-Net Reviews

"There is no doubt that Disturbing Attachments is, ?rst and foremost, a work of and about queer studies, a fearless and scholarly probing of its disciplinary norms, its discursive limits, and its most embarrassing relations. It should be read by all those who care about the discipline’s future . . . and, most importantly, by those who care about its past." - Andrew Counter, French Studies

"Amin’s book offers a dizzying number of theoretical interventions, in an elegant style that makes up for the uncompromising density of the text. With refreshing currency, Disturbing Attachments displaces queer studies outside its presentist US context." - Mehammed Amadeus Mack, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies

"Disturbing Attachments is a formidable read. It is theoretically mobile, stylistically gratifying, and conceptually probing." - Helmut Puff, American Historical Review