%0 Journal Article
%T Anticipations, afterlives: On the temporal and affective reorientations of sexual difference
%A Yanbing Er
%J Feminist Theory
%@ 1741-2773
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1464700118754731
%X This article focuses on the affective potential of anticipation, in its ready endorsement of the unknown, as a formative lens for theorising feminist temporalities. I draw from earlier readings of Luce Irigaray¡¯s conceptual paradigm of sexual difference to examine how its articulation of a feminist future that is inherently unknowable might contribute to recent debates on the temporalities of feminist thought. The article presents two broadly intersecting lines of argument. I first emphasise the continued centrality of sexual difference in its anticipatory imperative for thinking feminism but ¨C or perhaps, especially ¨C through a contradictory retrieval of the term that re-narrates its contemporary significance. In other words, it is precisely the retroactive position that sexual difference occupies that exacts a critical reorientation of existing modes of feminist temporalities; it moreover does so as a theoretical construct that altogether circumvents our understanding of feminism as a progress narrative. Secondly, I build upon Drucilla Cornell¡¯s contentions in Beyond Accommodation that the unknown futurity inaugurated by the trajectories of sexual difference demands a dimension of inquiry that is inevitably aesthetic (1991). I identify a possibility of literature¡¯s reinvigoration in emergence narratives of feminist theorising, particularly in a certain ethical capacity precipitated by its affective experience of enchantment, which mirrors the ¡®wonder¡¯ that sexual difference incites. If we are to continue to use literature as a conducive space of feminist analysis, then it is the forward-looking perpetuation of feminist narratives that must also be rethought for their investment in the multiple contingencies of anticipation
%K Affect
%K anticipation
%K futurity
%K literature
%K Luce Irigaray
%K sexual difference
%K temporality
%K wonder
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1464700118754731