Vaccines- how we define what a healthy body is- tying reproductive futurity to the idea of the healthy

body- we control good and bad life. Disease is on the corner- we need a tightly knit community for the
future. This discourse is weaponized against certain people. Some people don’t trust the government,
and the discourse is weaponized to frame them as anti-vaxxers.

Civic Education- Education about civic engagement relies on a normative definition of what politics is
which overshadows queer life that exists outside of the state.

Lacan shit.

Imagination, Symbolism, Reality

Imaginary- reflections of the body- rapid way to express thoughts- fundamental to growth. Uninformed
imaginary is very childlike, impressionable, narcissistic, self-absorbed. Making things up. Confabulation-
errors based on impressions. Always “correct.” In peter pans world, everything suits his imagination, for
peter to pull this off, he must be isolated, every individual makes up their own universe on the fly, these
worlds are always exclusive. 3 possibilities- lost in one’s imagination, mindless followers of peter pan.
Next, parallel play, not interacting. Third is conflict, denials, bullying, violence- the lord of the flies.
Fraudulent- making things up. No rules or need to reality test.

Symbolic- The law, application and consistency. Accepted agreements use the system of the symbolic,
these aren’t universal, but when people agree it works. Lacan calls the symbolic the name of the father-
the father informs us of rules and symbols, following them himself. Everything is linked together.
Language is just symbols. Symbols are only references to other symbols, if you look really close at them
they are nothing, they are merely rules and links between the real. Absence- nothing here. Symbolsim +
Imagination create something.

Real- Authentic truth, the absolute. Not made up of symbols or approximated by what our brains see.
The real exists beyond our mind. We don’t see a table, we see light and a set of rules that we call a
table. The real resists absolute symbolization- outside of language or logic, outside of our capacity to
think. The real is the impossible. It is exactly what we want to describe, but we cannot.

The relationship between all is that there is a symbolic order that is oriented toward a future that
protects the child. Politics always fails when oppostional. Queerness is oppositionality beyond
opposition.

The child becomes the representation of an entire social order- this makes politics eternally defunct.
Law serves to mediate the differences between our imaginaries. The child never exists- just mediated on
what the future might look like, existing through the sacrifice of those who are here now- abortion
killing mothers. No other side to the discussion, there can be no objection to the idea that we should
project our society into the future. Opposition in the social order that prioritizes the child always affirms
the social order that affirms a child that is not yet here.

This is part of a pulling away from the symbolic order of society. Edelman says queer engativity by
pulling out of the symbolic order strives towards not something good, which cannot exist in a symbolic
order, because language can’t describe reality. The symbolic is always insufficient because It cant reach
an objective reality.

What does it look like to escape, what does queer negativity to displace this order? Negativity disruts
the idea that there is a shared social reality, since the imaginary is the only thing that exists in
communication, symbolic attempts to bridge this gap. Queer negativity realizes there is not a staticity to
identity, not a good, but Edelman strives toward better, which is nothing but an attention to those
feelings, impulses, desires that are beyond description, this is lacan’s idea of truth.

Joussiance, pain and pleasure that occurs when a subject approaches the real. Withdrawing from
futurity and instead approaches impulses and desires that animate action and emotion pulls us toward
joussaince, this is how politics might actualize. This isn’t a better understanding of sexualities or
identities, but instead abandoning the ideal that we should strive towards the future or the politics of
hope.

Queer theory that escapes from futurity is the death drive of society- Lacan says this is the towards
disarticulation of the symbolic order that creates a shared symbolic reality. By disrupting the idea of a
shared project of the future through the child diminishes the violence that perpetuates the squo in an
attempt to force the real to align with our imaginations.

DEBATE. Edelman says all politics that affirms futurity is impossible to escape the violence of the
symbolic order. These affs push the child to recreate the social order, which necessitates the violence
against those who exist now who are antithetical to the symbolic order or future. SP3 and SP2 both
project an alternative future, indicating that subjects may be able to come to a more accurate
understanding of themselves, this relation always fails, the studier could never represent the imaginary,
always locked in the gap that is language, the attempt to fill this gap necessistates violence which
precludes the possibility of a new method external to this politics. Example prior to gay marriage, the
oppositional logic that denied these people the right to get marriage that defends marriage as an
institution that defends children and protects our ethics into the future, defends the future children who
may be raised by an “immoral” same sex marriage while denying individuals who exist the rights of
getting married and the benefits that come from that.