Research Catalog

Title

Cruising utopia : the then and there of queer futurity / José Esteban Muñoz.

Author

Muñoz, José Esteban

Publication

• New York : New York University Press, [2009]
• ©2009

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xi, 223 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 23 cm.

Summary

"The LGBT agenda for too long has been dominated by pragmatic issues like same-sex marriage and gays in the military. It has been stifled by this myopic focus on the present, which is short-sighted and assimilationist. Cruising Utopia seeks to break the present stagnancy by cruising ahead. Drawing on the work of Ernst Bloch, José Esteban Muñoz recalls the queer past for guidance in presaging its future. He considers the work of seminal artists and writers such as Andy Warhol, LeRoi Jones, Frank O'Hara, Ray Johnson, Fred Herko, Samuel Delany, and Elizabeth Bishop, alongside contemporary performance and visual artists like Dynasty Handbag, My Barbarian, Luke Dowd, Tony Just, and Kevin McCarty in order to decipher the anticipatory illumination of art and its uncanny ability to open windows to the future. In a startling repudiation of what the LGBT movement has held dear, Muñoz contends that queerness is instead a futurity bound phenomenon, a "not yet here" that critically engages pragmatic presentism. Part manifesto, part love-letter to the past and the future, Cruising Utopia argues that the here and now are not enough and issues an urgent call for the revivification of the queer political imagination." -- Publisher's description

Series Statement

Sexual cultures

Uniform Title

• Project Muse UPCC books
• Sexual cultures.

Subject

• Queer theory
• Utopias
• Homosexuality and art
• Performance art
• Utopias
• Théorie queer
• Utopies
• Homosexualité et art
• Homosexuality and art
• Performance art
• Queer theory
• Queerteori > utopier
• Performance
• Queerteori

Genre/Form

Performance art.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-216) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction: feeling utopia -- Queerness as horizon: utopian hermeneutics in the face of gay pragmatism -- Ghosts of public sex: utopian longings, queer memories -- The future is in the present: sexual avant-gardes and the performance of utopia -- Gesture, ephemera, and queer feeling: approaching Kevin Aviance -- Cruising the toilet: LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, radical black traditions, and queer futurity -- Stages: queers, punks, and the utopian performative -- Utopia's seating chart: Ray Johnson, Jill Johnston, and queer intermedia as system -- Just like heaven: queer utopian art and the aesthetic dimension -- A jeté out the window: Fred Herko's incandescent illumination -- After Jack: queer failure, queer virtuosity -- Conclusion: "take ecstasy with me."

ISBN

• 9780814757277
• 0814757278
• 9780814757284
• 0814757286

LCCN

2009021714

OCLC

• 326466222
• SCSB-11487111

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library