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HEATHER LOVE'S FEELING BACKWARD: LOSS AND THE POLITICS OF QUEER HISTORY, CAMBRIDGE: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2007
WAN-CHUAN KAO
Heather Love's work is haunted by figures from the past, both real and fictive, who have refused to behave themselves as redeemable (queer) subjects for (queer) critics. Reacting against "the need to turn the difficulties of gay, lesbian, and transgender history to good political use in the present" (104), Love contends that the faith in the power of Foucauldian reverse discourse, best exemplified in the ideology of gay pride that transforms sexual shame into social affirmation, has resulted in a critical blind spot. Armed with this insight, Love thus participates in the recent (re)turn to temporalities in queer studies that reexamines conceptions of time in queer historiography and that seeks to envision a queer future. Annamarie Jagose, for instance, wonders about "the ease with which we reify queer temporality" (2007, 186). Too many critics, Love points out, have promised "to rescue the past when in fact they dream of being rescued themselves" (33). Resisting the idealization of cross-historical intimacies, Love postulates a queer critical practice rooted in a "backward future" (147) that both insists on a rigorous embrace of the past and orients itself towards the future. Love not only turns backward, but also cleaves to the negative affects from the past that seem especially "bad" for political agency. Because contemporary queer subjects continue to experience shame...