Motel of the Mysteries
by David Macaulay
from Houghton Mifflin/Walter Lorraine Books
It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.
Intimacies
by Leo Bersani
from University Of Chicago Press
In pursuit of new forms of intimacy they take up a range of concerns across a variety of contexts. To test the hypothesis that the essence of the analytic exchange is intimate talk without sex, they compare Patrice Leconte’s film about an accountant mistaken for a psychoanalyst, Intimate Strangers, with Henry James’s classic novella The Beast in the Jungle. A discussion of the radical practice of barebacking—unprotected anal sex between gay men—delineates an intimacy that rejects the personal. Even serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the Bush administration’s war on terror enter the scene as the conversation turns to the way aggression thrills and gratifies the ego. Finally, in a reading of Socrates’ theory of love from Plato’s Phaedrus, Bersani and Phillips call for a new form of intimacy which they term “impersonal narcissism”: a divestiture of the ego and a recognition of one’s non-psychological potential self in others. This revolutionary way of relating to the world, they contend, could lead to a new human freedom by mitigating the horrifying violence we blithely accept as part of human nature.
Charmingly persuasive and daringly provocative, Intimacies is a rare opportunity to listen in on two brilliant thinkers as they explore new ways of thinking about the human psyche.
Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Series Q)
by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
from Duke University Press
A pioneer in queer theory and literary studies, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick brings together for the first time in Touching Feeling her most powerful explorations of emotion and expression. In essays that show how her groundbreaking work in queer theory has developed into a deep interest in affect, Sedgwick offers what she calls "tools and techniques for nondualistic thought," in the process touching and transforming such theoretical discourses as psychoanalysis, speech-act theory, Western Buddhism, and the Foucauldian "hermeneutics of suspicion."
In prose sometimes somber, often high-spirited, and always accessible and moving, Touching Feeling interrogates—through virtuoso readings of works by Henry James, J. L. Austin, Judith Butler, the psychologist Silvan Tomkins and others—emotion in many forms. What links the work of teaching to the experience of illness? How can shame become an engine for queer politics, performance, and pleasure? Is sexuality more like an affect or a drive? Is paranoia the only realistic epistemology for modern intellectuals? Ultimately, Sedgwick's unfashionable commitment to the truth of happiness propels a book as open-hearted as it is intellectually daring.
Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England
by Sharon Marcus
from Princeton University Press
Women in Victorian England wore jewelry made from each other's hair and wrote poems celebrating decades of friendship. They pored over magazines that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few had sexual relationships with each other, exchanged rings and vows, willed each other property, and lived together in long-term partnerships described as marriages. But, as Sharon Marcus shows, these women were not seen as gender outlaws. Their desires were fanned by consumer culture, and their friendships and unions were accepted and even encouraged by family, society, and church. Far from being sexless angels defined only by male desires, Victorian women openly enjoyed looking at and even dominating other women. Their friendships helped realize the ideal of companionate love between men and women celebrated by novels, and their unions influenced politicians and social thinkers to reform marriage law.
Through a close examination of literature, memoirs, letters, domestic magazines, and political debates, Marcus reveals how relationships between women were a crucial component of femininity. Deeply researched, powerfully argued, and filled with original readings of familiar and surprising sources, Between Women overturns everything we thought we knew about Victorian women and the history of marriage and family life. It offers a new paradigm for theorizing gender and sexuality--not just in the Victorian period, but in our own.
What Do Gay Men Want?: An Essay on Sex, Risk, and Subjectivity
by David Halperin
from University of Michigan Press
“Compelling, timely, and provocative. The writing is sleek and exhilarating. It doesn’t waste time telling us what it will do or what it has just done—it just does it.”
—Don Kulick, Professor of Anthropology, New York University
How we can talk about sex and risk in the age of barebacking—or condomless sex—without invoking the usual bogus and punitive clichés about gay men’s alleged low self-esteem, lack of self-control, and other psychological “deficits”? Are there queer alternatives to psychology for thinking about the inner life of homosexuality? What Do Gay Men Want? explores some of the possibilities.
Unlike most writers on the topic of gay men and risky sex, David Halperin liberates gay male subjectivity from psychology, demonstrating the insidious ways in which psychology’s defining opposition between the normal and the pathological subjects homosexuality to medical reasoning and revives a whole set of unexamined moral assumptions about “good” sex and “bad” sex.
In particular, Halperin champions neglected traditions of queer thought, including both literary and popular discourses, by drawing on the work of well-known figures like Jean Genet and neglected ones like Marcel Jouhandeau. He shows how the long history of of gay men’s uses of “abjection” can offer an alternative, nonmoralistic model for thinking about gay male subjectivity, something which is urgently needed in the age of barebacking.
Anyone searching for nondisciplinary ways to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS among gay men—or interested in new modes of thinking about gay male subjectivity—should read this book.
David M. Halperin is W. H. Auden Collegiate Professor of the History and Theory of Sexuality, Professor of English, Professor of Women’s Studies, Professor of Comparative Literature, and Adjunct Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan.
No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Series Q)
by Lee Edelman
from Duke University Press
In this searing polemic, Lee Edelman outlines a radically uncompromising new ethics of queer theory. His main target is the all-pervasive figure of the child, which he reads as the linchpin of our universal politics of “reproductive futurism.” Edelman argues that the child, understood as innocence in need of protection, represents the possibility of the future against which the queer is positioned as the embodiment of a relentlessly narcissistic, antisocial, and future-negating drive. He boldly insists that the efficacy of queerness lies in its very willingness to embrace this refusal of the social and political order. In No Future, Edelman urges queers to abandon the stance of accommodation and accede to their status as figures for the force of a negativity that he links with irony, jouissance, and, ultimately, the death drive itself.
Closely engaging with literary texts, Edelman makes a compelling case for imagining Scrooge without Tiny Tim and Silas Marner without little Eppie. Looking to Alfred Hitchcock’s films, he embraces two of the director’s most notorious creations: the sadistic Leonard of North by Northwest, who steps on the hand that holds the couple precariously above the abyss, and the terrifying title figures of The Birds, with their predilection for children. Edelman enlarges the reach of contemporary psychoanalytic theory as he brings it to bear not only on works of literature and film but also on such current political flashpoints as gay marriage and gay parenting. Throwing down the theoretical gauntlet, No Future reimagines queerness with a passion certain to spark an equally impassioned debate among its readers.
The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do With the Other
by Walker Percy
from Picador
Love, West Hollywood: Reflections of Los Angeles
from Alyson Books
From New Orleans (Love, Bourbon Street) to San Francisco (Love, Castro Street), Alyson's richly detailed, highly acclaimed series finds its way to the sun-dappled land of Southern California. The story of Los Angeles' gay history is often overshadowed by the mystique of Hollywood, as well as the notion that the gay community was centered in the City by the Bay or the Big Apple. Now, Los Angeles' rich literary and cultural heritage is revealed in these thoughtful, humorous, and insightful essays.
Chris Freeman and James J. Berg both hold PhDs in literature, and are the co-editors of several books.
Breathe
by Blair, R. Poole
from Burrow Publishing, LLC
BREATHE is the story of a teenage boy's struggle to keep his sexuality a secret from his devout religious family and homophobic friends. BREATHE, which is set against the backdrop of contemporary city life and hip-hop culture, is written with a passion and verve reminiscent of James Earl Hardy. A realistic portrayal of the isolation, angst, and mental turmoil of a young African-American male coping with his sexuality, BREATHE is a magnificent work of American fiction. Blair R. Poole's prose undoubtedly leaves you anxiously turning the pages to find out the protagonist's Fate. And, after you read it, you'll truly want to breathe!
Losing Matt Shepard
by Beth Loffreda
from Columbia University Press
Laramie, Wyoming, is a complicated town that has only become more so since the infamous murder of a gay University of Wyoming student named Matt Shepard on a lonely dirt road in October 1998. A university town in the middle of one of the country's most rural, poor, and conservative states, it was unwittingly thrown into the middle of the nation's debates over homosexuality and hate crimes. While "Laramie didn't kill Matt," as University of Wyoming professor Beth Loffreda writes, "It might let us see how the politics of sexuality--perhaps now the most divisive issue in America's 'culture wars'--plays out in a forgotten corner of the country." As an insider and an outsider (she is the straight advisor to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Association and a state newcomer clearly in love with her surroundings), Loffreda approaches the complex questions the media, with their pack mentality, overlooked or shied away from using her own local but not provincial perspective. Why did Matt's death, which was one of 33 anti-gay murders that year, grip the nation? Why did none of the seven bias crimes bills proposed in Wyoming after the murder pass? What is the experience of being homosexual in a state with not a single gay gathering place to speak of and most people too afraid to be out? What happens when emotion--rather than action--is the only response to a hate crime? And how should Matt be remembered?
Leaving the media assumptions about the "hate state" in the dust, Loffreda deftly portrays a people deeply affected by what has happened in their midst, replete with the daily contradictions, political clashes, and halting transformations that defy sound bites. She introduces us to those the media never thought to interview--a jaded gay American Indian as well as Mexican American university students with their own stories of bigotry--and those making the real change in Laramie: people like Mike, who came out after Matt's death and has found the courage to become an activist, and the gays and lesbians who dressed as angels during the murderers' trials, blocking defrocked minister Fred Phelps and his virulent anti-gay messages with their enormous wings. Loffreda's nuanced, perceptive, and graceful discussion reminds us that the inheritance of Matt's death is far from settled for any of us. --Lesley Reed
"When we pledge allegiance to the United States we say 'with liberty and justice for all'; Losing Matt Shepard is an excellent book about citizens who don't understand that 'all'means 'all'.... It is a must-read for understanding the cultural wars still raging in the twenty-first century." -- Patricia Schroeder, former U.S. Representative from Colorado
The murder in October 1998 of a twenty-one-year-old gay University of Wyoming student ignited a media frenzy. The crime resonated deeply with America's bitter history of violence against minorities. While the details of the tragedy are familiar to most people, the complex content is not. This book explores why the murder still haunts us and why it should.
Beth Loffreda is uniquely qualified to write this account. As a professor new to the state and the straight faculty advisor to the campus Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Association, she is both an insider and outsider to the events. She draws upon her own observations as well as dozens of interviews with students, townspeople, journalists, state politicians, activists, and gay and lesbian residents.
The book shows how the politics of sexuality perhaps now the most divisive issue in America's culture wars unfolds in a forgotten corner of the country. Loffreda succeeds brilliantly in capturing daily life since October 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming a community in a rural, poor, conservative, and breathtakingly beautiful state without a single gay bar or bookstore. Rather than focusing on one person Matt Shepard she presents a full range of characters, including the locals (both gay and straight), the national gay activists who quickly descended on Laramie, the homocide investigators, and even a cameo appearance by Peter, Paul, and Mary. Her book recounts not only the typical responses to Matt's death but also the surprising stories of ordinary people whose lives were transformed individual voices ignored in the media frenzy.
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