Searching for Lauren Berlant: Reflections on writing, temporality and loss

Abstract

This article reflects on the difficulties of writing with/alongside creative practice during periods of lockdown endured as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It follows my search for Lauren Berlant’s writing on the pandemic and my desire to make sense of the claustrophobic intensity of that time through their writing on attachment, precarity and ‘cruel optimism’. In reflecting on the failure to write, this article journeys through temporal rhythms, critiques of neo-liberalism, temporalities of care and unending lists to argue for the importance of hidden work in writing and/as ordinary life.