Refusal

Describe the death of an animal that mattered to you. What did it teach you about loss?

Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” includes the devastating baby water buffalo scene—violence, witnessing, the unspeakable. Why does animal death so often serve as rehearsal for human grief?

Albert Camus calls suicide “the one truly serious philosophical problem.” Lee Edelman’s No Future thesis offers a queer critique of futurity itself. What does Edelman’s “no future” thesis offer to thinking about birth and death?