The Palliative, in medicine, is generally understood as that period of time after a person is no longer searching for medical interventions to extend life and before the patient dies. The question we will consider in this seminar is what radical possibilities can come between death and dying? However, we will not restrict ourselves to thinking about this question in terms of a human life, but extend the question to all forms of "endings" — other species, a language, a cultural form, a town, an economic system, a planet, a poem. We will consider what the palliation of everyday life might look and feel like and how might it function as a model for radical politics and art.

Many queer theorists have been asking similar questions, such as Jack Halberstam in The Queer Art of Failure and Lee Edelman in No Future. In addition to this, Buddhist Philosophy also touches on this question of the formlessness of death. As does recent work in Afro-Pessimisms, such as Fred Moten's work that mobilizes the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro.

In addition to these above-mentioned works in Queer Theory, Buddhism, and Japanese Philosophy students could expect to encounter current palliative and "end-of-life" debates within medicine. In terms of the aesthetic, novels, films, and other cultural works that specifically confront their own ends would also be assigned, such as Roberto Bolano's novels and films by JL Godard, who was a palliative artist par excellence in the way he repeatedly killed off his own works, not to mention the very field called cinema itself.