Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (Sexual Cultures)

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Oh god, I wish I was back in school, and I could use the material in this book on a project of my own. so i liked the idea of queerness as reaching, but i just think there is something fatalistic also; at times this book seems to romanticize where you're reaching *from* (homophobic violence, poverty, drug addiction, etc).

Perfect example of how academic pontification on social justice can actively work towards rescinding the hard-won victories of marginalized groups.José Esteban Muñoz (1967–2013) was Professor and Chair of Performance Studies at New York University. This investment in the ‘positive image,’ in proper upstanding sodomites, is a mistake that is all too common in many discourses on and by ‘the other. but maybe Munoz is skipping steps here because it is obvious to his intended readers, that if people watch a play and see within it a queer utopia they will become more radicalized or feel more community or something, so that this book really didn't feel the need to connect any dots to why reading utopia into drag performances will ultimately like, do anything. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

It also discussed trans issues very little, but when it did it was done in a radical way and I think his discussions of queerness as a whole include trans/gnc issues anyway. A dazzling masterpiece of critical theory and cultural analysis, maintaining a firm focus on the key political issues while illustrating them through detailed and beautifully written analyses of queer performance and visual art. Gay liberation’s activist past and pragmatic present are merely prologue to a queer cultural future, Muñoz suggests in this critical condemnation of the political status quo. sure, kids and heteronormative reproduction are a kind of violence, munoz admits, but not one that elides or obfuscates the ability of queer theory and queer lives to create something fleshy, significant, and other than the pessimistic or scolding. On the anniversary of its original publication, this edition includes two essays that extend and expand the project of Cruising Utopia, as well as a new foreword by the current editors of Sexual Cultures, the book series he co-founded with Ann Pellegrini 20 years ago.Chambers-Letson, Nyong’o and Pelligrini argue that ‘queerness, blackness, brownness, minoritarian becoming, and the utopian imaginary […] all cohere around a certain “failure to be normal”’ (xiv). More than ten years on from its original publication, in the face of our own stagnant and negative present, the book remains a joyful and provocative read, not just for students of queer cultural history, but anyone keen to accept Muñoz’s invitation to collectively step out of ‘this place and time to something fuller, vaster, more sensual, and brighter’ (189). My only reservations about the book are that at times it was excessive with the philosophical jargon and somewhat pedantic in discussions of definitions; this was more so the case in the final few chapters about a few artists and their movements.

Fisher has by and large become a meme at this point, which is also disheartening, and also frustrating and seemingly contrary to the spirit of Fisher’s work. there is something to the juxtaposition of what is-now and what can be or is-but-isn't-the-whole-world-it-just-is-in-this-moment that is beautiful in a sad way.

That said, it was a let down to have so many of those sources be almost exclusively men,mostly cis, mostly able-bodied, mostly thin. A hope in the possibility of not becoming weighed down in pragmatic political debates about marriage and gay rights. my beef i think is , especially post-hennessy "profits and pleasure", feeling a little unromanced by the Utility of looking for queer utopia in art. it doesn't work the same with two men, as in there is not the same potential for sex-based exploitation. there is the suggestion that these traces can change your outlook and give you Hope, and that Hope is important for change, but not very many bones beyond that.

The long-awaited second instalment in Samantha Shannon's Sunday Times and New York Times-bestselling series Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. The opening passage speaks to Muñoz’s investment in concrete utopias (following Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, who acts as Cruising Utopia’s primary intellectual influence), which he understands as linked to specific historical liberation struggles and (real or potential) collectivity.As a work of theory, Cruising Utopia is dense, and its array of artistic and theoretical sources could be off-putting for the unfamiliar reader. No obstante, me alegró leer que cuando se encuentra con sus amigos los maricones, disfruta de ser el más camp. same critique at another angle; it felt weird to talk about Fred Herko, an artist who at the end of his life was homeless and addicted to amphetamines and ultimately suicidal; and i guess not talk about what societally or culturally had failed him ?