Conjointness restored?
Chapter 10 defines and assesses five new approaches to adherence which respond to the late-modern obligation of “having to be what one cannot be.” They are drawn from contemporary social and critical theories, especially those influenced by poststructuralist thinking. These involve loosening the obligation to be what one cannot be (intersectionality, chains of equivalence, translation); denying the impossibility of being what one cannot be (Judith Butler’s performativity); being it anyway (Slavoj Žižek’s unabashed approach); sharing incompleteness (Derridean approaches); and beginning from equality (Jacques Rancière). The chapter argues that that each response has its merits and will be attractive to some forms of social movement work, but none of them produces answers with which all movements can be content.