Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity

Description

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, Jose Esteban Munoz 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, Munoz 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. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Feeling Utopia 1 Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism 2 Ghosts of Public Sex: Utopian Longings, Queer Memories 3 The Future Is in the Present: Sexual Avant-Gardes and the Performance of Utopia 4 Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling: Approaching Kevin Aviance 5 Cruising the Toilet: LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Radical Black Traditions, and Queer Futurity 6 Stages: Queers, Punks, and the Utopian Performative 7 Utopia’s Seating Chart: Ray Johnson, Jill Johnston, and Queer Intermedia as System 8 Just Like Heaven: Queer Utopian Art and the Aesthetic Dimension 9 A Jeté Out the Window: Fred Herko’s Incandescent Illumination 10 After Jack: Queer Failure, Queer Virtuosity Conclusion: “Take Ecstasy with Me” Notes Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y About the Author Color illustrations