“On Being in Life Without Wanting the World (Living with Ellipsis)” This talk offers a new register for thinking about political subjectivity. It is located in a shattered, yet intelligible zone defined by “being in life without wanting the world” — a state of misery and detachment that, the talk claims, is a fundamental political affect, well-known to historically subordinated people (people of color, of non-normative sexuality, proletarianized laborers). Reading with Claudia Rankine (Don’t Let Me Be Lonely), Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel and Tom Ford 2009 film A Single Man and Harryette Mullen (Sleeping with the Dictionary, 2002), it describes life at the limit of optimism in terms of a dissociative poetics.