Vital Impasse
Animacy Hierarchies, Irredeemability, and a Life Otherwise
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2997712 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chad Shomura (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 73 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 835-855 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/aq.2021.0059 |
| OpenAlex | W4206084276 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
The good life in the United States has hit a crisis, yet people remain wedded to it. Lauren Berlant has called this kind of situation an "impasse," which indicates the seeming unavailability of alternatives when the good life appears out of reach. In this essay, I develop impasse to show that the good life, while establishing how life ought to be lived, tacitly circumscribes what life is. The good life is founded on what Mel Chen has called an "animacy hierarchy," which categorizes and ranks beings through ascriptions of sentience, agency, and ability. Although impasse typically evokes stuckness, it is described here as full of unruly life that provokes new political control and possibilities. This essay navigates feminist, queer, and new materialist work on affect and Jennifer Egan's short story "Found Objects" to show that lively matter can open an impasse in the good life; disciplinary and biopolitical mechanisms seek to restore the animacy hierarchies of the good life; and impasse points to a life otherwise by opening modes of being that are irredeemable to the good life
Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Animacy · Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Everyday life · Hierarchy · Materialism · Political science · Politics · Queer · Sentience · Social science · Sociology · The good life · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |