ABSTRACT
'Cruel optimism' names a relation of attachment to compromised conditions of possibility. Lauren Berlant's Cruel Optimism details new ways in which we might understand the experiences of ordinary living for low-wage workers for whom life is one long series of crises that demand all of one's energy to negotiate. This chapter illustrates Berlant's ideas through a recent account of a growing class of 'work-campers' in the United States in Jessica Bruder's Nomadland and its associated documentary. It paints a picture of life in the 'camperforce': an emerging group of retirement-age Americans who have unexpectedly encountered a decimation of wealth, and who now travel across the United States in old recreational vehicles, in search of minimum-wage and physically strenuous labour. Cruel optimism is Berlant's term for describing situations in which a thing we desire – it could be food, a relationship, a fantasy of a certain kind of life or a political ideology – stands in the way of our flourishing.
