Upcoming Keynote Talk at “TRANS” – Comparative Literature Conference (U of T)
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Gender & Sexuality
New Essay on Cruising and the Common
I am so pleased that my essay, “The Art of the Consummate Cruise and the Essential Risk of the Common” has now been published (in two parts) by Feedback, a truly excellent online, open-access critical theory weblog/journal. Part I: The Ethics of the Pleasure. Part II: Cruising as Aesthetic Intuition of the Common.
The essay originated as a paper that I presented at last year’s American Studies Association conference (Toronto, October 2015) on a panel organized by Ricky Varghese titled, “Sex, Misère, and the Redemptive: Barebacking and Historicity.” I want to thank Ricky for the invitation to participate in what was a very thoughtful, insightful and provocative discussion.
In the essay, I argue that we need to shift from a language of self and other towards one of co-exposed singularities, in order to think further about an ethics of pleasure that is not predicated upon sacrifice—either of the other or of the self. In addition, I call for the need to think sexual and other forms of risk and pleasure in terms of the common. Based upon recent work by Bill Haver, the common here is understood as always a sense of the common—including the aesthetic intuition of, and erotic inclination towards, the impossibility of the common.
I also want to thank “Joe,” the photographer of the image that I have reproduced here and that accompanies both parts of the essay, for kindly granting me the permission to reproduce his strikingly beautiful, evocative and downright sexy photograph.
“Halls of Narcissistic Indulgence”
In a column today for Salon.com, “Who’s Really Getting Naked at the Gym,” Paula Young Lee responds to a recent New York Times article about the re-design of gyms, and how millennial men evidently want more privacy in the locker room.
Working within a 30-minute deadline, Paula contacted me to get my response to the Times article (which I had just read early that morning) and my observations and opinion on the situation, as I see it, in gym locker rooms today. Like all of Paula’s articles for Salon, this one is super-smart, bitingly funny and thus a great read.
Paula is the author of the best-selling, award-winning, Deer Hunting in Paris (2013). Here’s her take on the naked millennial male body:
The naked body is vulnerable because it’s stripped of culture. Abject and ashamed, it is reduced to the visible signs of health, musculature, fitness, thinness, and other markers that determine hierarchy inside a group. It is the condition of being stripped of status that is unbearable, prompting the young to reassert the armor of their street clothing as quickly as possible. Their insecurity isn’t lodged in their bodies but in their unstable social positions, which is why more powerful men– the “old guys” who, in theory, ought to be embarrassed by the grizzle and the hoar–don’t care two figs what you think of their butt cracks or belly buttons.
And as she quotes me as saying:
“Old guys have been parading around locker rooms for decades, and younger guys have been less prone to let it all hang out,” Ricco explains. “So this homosocial dynamic of nudity isn’t anything particularly new. But I would argue that there has never been more voyeurism and exhibitionism in the locker room than there is now.” Indeed, he affirms, “I would say that male bodies—and especially young muscular male bodies—are putting themselves on display more than ever.”
Lots more in the article, including where I talk about “halls of narcissistic indulgence.” Enjoy! And see you at the gym.
Tom McDonough’s review of The Decision Between Us
I am very pleased to receive this review of my book by art historian Tom McDonough, that was recently published in the journal Critical Inquiry. Click on the link below to access the complete review.
NEW ESSAY: “Drool: liquid fore-speech of the fore-scene”
Published in the latest issue of the online, open-access journal World Picture, on the theme of abandon. You can read and download my essay and the others in the volume, here: World Picture 10: Abandon
An essay of mine is included in this massive new issue of the journal Scapegoat, which features an impressive line-up of contributors in over 400 pages on the topic of “excess.”
Scapegoat: Architecture Landscape Political Economy 05 Excess
Editorial Preview:
Ours is unquestionably a time of excess. While currencies and commodities continue to circulate, reifying segregation and inequality throughout the global political economy, excess leaks out in all directions, sometimes fostering movements of resistance, other times permitting improvisational opportunism among often neglected actors, and still at other moments irrevocably damaging ecologies and environments which we humans precariously but ruthlessly inhabit. The pleasures and perils of excess cross divisions of class, race, gender and sexuality, while also reinforcing aspects of these and other identities.
Can we design for, or among, the excesses of contemporary culture? How do practices of architecture and landscape architecture, as well as adjacent practices of art, curation, philosophy, and typography, suggest ways to amplify, capture, or redirect excess?
In EXCESS-Scapegoat’s sixth issue-we explore the productive, resistant, and imperiling aspects of excess as an attempt to advance our project of emboldening theoretical and historical modes of inquiry, scholarly research, and design practice. It is a vast conceptual terrain, but one that offers many compelling perspectives.
Contributors to EXCESS include: Ariella AZOULAY, Georges BATAILLE, Jean BAUDRILLARD, Alex BERCEANU, Diana BERESFORD-KROEGER, James BRIDLE, Melissa CATE CHRIST, Tings CHAK, Steven CHODORIWSKY, Vicki DASILVA, Heather DAVIS, Sara DEAN, Amanda DE LISIO, Seth DENIZEN, EMIL, ÉPOPÉE, FALA ATELIER, Valeria FEDERIGHI, Natasha GINWALA, HEBBEL AM UFER, Lisa HIRMER, Gary HUSTWIT, David HUTAMA, Kate HUTCHENS, Jennifer JACQUET, Martti KALLIALA, Prachi KAMDAR, Stuart KENDALL, Chris KRAUS, Abidin KUSNO, Emily KUTIL, Clint LANGEVIN, Justin LANGLOIS, Sam LEACH, Stanisław LEM, Sylvère LOTRINGER, Filipe MAGALHAES, Danielle MCDONNOUGH, Meredith MILLER, Srimoyee MITRA, Jeffrey MONAGHAN, Jon PACK, Keith PEIFFER, Rich PELL, pHgH, Rick PRELINGER, Thomas PROVOST, raumlaborberlin, John Paul RICCO, Erin SCHNEIDER, Ana Luisa SOARES, Scott SØRLI, Raphael SPERRY, Anna-Sophie SPRINGER, Antonio STOPPANI, Maria TAYLOR, Eugene THACKER, Kika THORNE, Emily VANDERPOL, Kevin WALBY, Eyal WEIZMAN, Jason YOUNG, Vivian ZIHERL, and Joanna ZYLINSKA.
Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public
Patterson Scarlett, Broome Street at Broadway (Rooftop Elevator Room), 2011, from the book, Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public.
I am a contributing author to Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public.
Click on this link for additional information and a free PDF of this fantastic new book.
http://www.art-agenda.com/shows/forever-today-inc-presents-petite-mort-recollections-of-a-queer-public/
Does Public Sex Matter?
Public sex[*] happens. The simplicity, brevity, honesty and candor of this proposition, is, I contend, one of the most principal ways in which public sex matters. It matters because it happens, and it happens because it matters. This is no small thing. It still happens and matters, even now, after so many attempts to insure that it no longer does. Public sex is resilient and persistent, and its temporal-historical stamina lies—in large part—in its geo-spatial anonymity, itinerancy, imperceptibility and illegality. In contemplating my response to the editors’ query, I considered the possibility of simply supplying them with a list of all of the places where I have had public sex (necessarily non-exhaustive due to the innumerable number of places over the years, as well as the limits of memory and the evanescent residuality of the encounters that it would retrace).
But as I thought back to these remembered incidents, I found it easy to recollect and draw out images of these scenes, yet nearly impossible in most instances to locate with any kind of cartographic accuracy the exact name or address of these particular spots—less punctuated locations than elliptical lines—easily returned to in memory or in actuality, yet difficult to nominally cite in a list. Herein lies the other principal way in which public sex matters: where it happens is without adequate or appropriate address. Less a place per se, than it is a non-appropriating taking place, public sex is the erotic/libidinal/desirous and pleasure-filled happening and coming together of two or more bodies in the pure exhilaration of this singular shared encounter with the space of their separation.
This text will appear in, Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public, edited by Carlos Motta and Joshua Lubin-Levy, forthcoming, September 2011. The project will also include an exhibition and series of public programs at Forever & Today, Inc. (www.foreverandtoday.org) in September 2011. For more information on the project, go to: http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/petite_mort_recollections_of_a_queer_public
[*] Or is it to be written: Public Sex (the difference being a matter of erring on the side of the adjectival or the eidetic)?
unbecoming community 