Queer reparative ethics. On Sedgwick, Klein, and Arendt's amor mundi

The project aims at framing the contours of a ‘queer reparative ethics’ as to argue in a favor of a reparative reading of Hannah Arendt’s notion of amor mundi. In its first part, the dissertation discusses the paradigm of reparation as emerging in queer theory, in the thought of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. It reconstructs its theoretical sources, namely the psychoanalytical framework of Melanie Klein, as well as Silvan Tomkins’ affect theory. It analyzes the way the paradigm has been dealt with in scholarly debates in queer, critical, and political theory, specifically in the thought of José Esteban Muñoz, Judith Butler, Mari Ruti, Amy Allen, and Lauren Berlant. After arguing in favor of an ethical-political reading of the notion of ‘reparation’, the dissertation therefore moves, in the second part, to discuss the existing scholarship connecting the thought of Hannah Arendt and queer theory. It reviews some of the queer and feminist readings of Arendt that concentrate on ‘action in concert’ as the core content of solidarity, political freedom, and ‘care or love for the world’. By drawing upon Arendt’s own elaboration, as well as on the secondary literature on the notions of revolution, new beginnings, and judgment, the dissertation argues, instead, in favor of a queer reparative reading of amor mundi, as a posture indexing practices of understanding and reconciliation, whereby we can come to love the world as a whole object of ambivalent affection.