will / desire

from willful subjects by sara ahmed

"when the will becomes will power, then the fate of the subject becomes 'in its power.' and when social problems are narrated as problems of will, they become a consequence of the failure of individuals to will themselves out of situations in which they find themselves."

"given that the will becomes a technique, a way of holding a subject to account, it could be understood as a straightening device. . . a queer history of will might foreground the association between will and error and explore its myriad forms."

"the will is thus called upon to resolve the problem of the will: not being fully determined from without becomes the requirement to determine from within."

"not philosophy is practiced by those who are not philosophers and aims to create room within philosophy for others who are not philosophers. not being a philosopher working with philosophy can be understood as generative: the incapacity to return texts to their proper histories allows us to read sideways or across, thus creating a different angle on what is being reproduced. not philosophy aims not to reproduce the body of philosophy by a willful citational practice: if philosophers are cited (and in this book many philosophers are cited0 they are not only cited alongside those who are not philosophers but are not given any priority over those who are not."

"one of my key aims is to explore how the will becomes a question of time by thinking through how will relates to the past as well as the future, and how the will is thus never quite present or in the time we are in"