Come As You Are: After Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick brings together two pieces of writing. In the first, “After Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,” Jonathan Goldberg assesses her legacy, prompted mainly by writing about Sedgwick’s work that has appeared in the years since her death in April 2009. Writing by Lauren Berlant, Jane Gallop, Katy Hawkins, Scott Herring, Lana Lin, and Philomina Tsoukala are among those considered as he explores questions of queer temporality and the breaching of ontological divides. Main concerns include the relationship of Sedgwick’s later work in Proust, fiber, and Buddhism to her fundamental contribution to queer theory, and the axes ...

In 2003, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick published the essay “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading. Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You” as part of the anthology Touching Feeling. Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. In it, Sedgwick asks why Western critique operates mostly with paranoid readings, readings that aim to expose hidden violent structures, and suggests a “reparative” approach that focusses not only on what is being written, or said, or done but how and to what end. The text was a starting point for Geraldine Tedder’s essay “You Are Probably Completely Oblivious That This Text Actually Is About ...

I’ve been looking for queer typography. Is anyone else out there? Who else is searching? I wonder if this is even a valid question. Looking for queer anything often feels lonely. The word queer resists definition, sometimes aligned with ideas about rejection, refusal, deviating from the expected, away from the normative. It’s certainly a political word, one that’s taken on expansive qualities throughout its history, qualities that aren’t necessarily confined to gender and sexuality… Originally delivered as a talk at the Type Directors Club “Type Drives Communities” Conference, February 2021.

In “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading,” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick takes to task Western critique for its tendency to be based on, even be synonymous with, suspicion. She characterizes it as foremost aiming to expose, believing – as does paranoia – that such an exposure will protect it from threat. Sedgwick laments the loss of other affective modes in theory that might aim to repair. She observes that these often aren’t taken seriously, are seen as naïve or complaisant. In her essay, Sedgwick attempts to expose (paradoxically, she herself admits) paranoia, to describe and understand its mechanisms, and asks what a ...