"Atmospheres demands we recognize that a way out of shitholes of the here, now and forever require attention to the breaks and clefts where collective possibility of being together, unconfined, rageful, might give us a kind of shape of impossibility-- one where we might better carve out a life-giving world in the cinders of a colonial humanity."--Ren-yo Hwang "Society and Space" (11/20/2023 12:00:00 AM)
"I am humbled by--or rather, humble before (because knowing their previous work, I certainly didn't enter it with selfproud expectation, rather an interest in learning with)--Stanley's clear-eyed determination to not only reevaluate the queer/trans station within/for and without the immanently violent social." --Mel Y. Chen "Society and Space" (11/20/2023 12:00:00 AM)
"Atmospheres of Violence exposes the violent ruse of settling for equality within nested systems bent on widespread immiseration, precarity, and violence, and intricately theorizes near life as a space of inventive resistance, a lab for existential experiments in ungovernability."--Hil Malatino "GLQ" (6/2/2023 12:00:00 AM)
"A must read for those interested in dismantling systems of oppression and in trans/queer liberation. Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals."--A. N. Weiss "Choice" (7/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)
"Eric A. Stanley's Atmospheres of Violence animates trans/queer, young queer, and racially dominated lives never quite stamped out by a brittle white supremacist egosystem. Written with tenderness and passionate thunder, the book's brilliant storytelling circulates grief and hope for the governed who remain alive and ungovernable. Throughout, Stanley offers vital pedagogies of truancy and wicked survival for potential collective life."--Lauren Berlant, author of "Cruel Optimism"
"Atmospheres of Violence offers a generous and generative reminder that queer and trans lives have always been bigger and more brilliant than the deadly state that tries to frighten and cajole us. Out of a devastating archive, Eric A. Stanley's queer and trans stories rise beyond assimilation, honoring our gorgeous survival and refusals as resistance."--Tourmaline, artist, activist, and writer
"A remarkable contribution to queer theory, an imperative analytic for abolitionist praxis, and a poignanttestament to enduring the present world in service of destroying the present world, Atmospheres of Violence is a vital text for those who look, labor, and long for livable lives on the horizon."--Kerry Keith "Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association" (9/23/2022 12:00:00 AM)