In The Ethics of Opting Out – Queer Theory’s Defiant Subjects, Mari Ruti explores the creative potential of opting out of “the good life”: of ideals of success, happiness, reproductivity and self-actualisation, deeply tied to heteronormative-capitalist-patriarchal notions of living and loving.
Synthesising the work of contemporary queer theorists – Lauren Berlant, Sara Ahmed, José Muñoz and so many others – she explores how these thinkers mobilise negativity as a political and ethical force that resists restrictive cultural standards. Their different approaches open up questions about alternative ways of living and relating, and about the potential of “bad feelings” such as melancholia and despair to undo the self again and again – not always as a deliberate choice, but as a deliberate leaning in.
But can we truly opt out?
Can we resist being co-opted, recycled into ever-new incarnations within systems of harm – continuing to be harmed and harming others? So easily, the attempt to escape becomes just another trend to be capitalised on. So easily, newly found identities and the need for community become targets of attack.
Ruti is careful not to turn “anti-normativity” into the new rule or to romanticise it.
So, what do we do? WHAT DO I DO?
In small ways, I take inspiration from thinkers like Ruti and those using refusal as a creative force.
Having been unable to conceive a second baby for 10 cycles, I now pause – and I am surprised at the magnitude of ideas, relationality (to plants, animals, women) that I experience. A burst of energy that may lead nowhere. And that is so ripe with love.
And of course, infertility is not the only (non) reproductive event that disrupts normative pathways of living. Even in the midst of pregnancy, birth and postpartum, we can find ourselves caught between what we imagined would be and what is actually unfolding. The image we had in mind, and the reality in front of our eyes. Unexpected desires, shifting relationships, the sudden unravelling of things we thought we knew.
Leaning into this – queering normativity – may liberate new pathways, forms of tenderness and relationship. Maybe, just maybe.
At its most subtle level, opting out may just be a moment of resting with the discomfort of things not going our way, and then opening to the gifts this may or may not bring.
Pausing without expectation and then moving on. Becoming water, shapeshifters, plays of light that can’t be grasped and commodified.
