Cruising Utopia, 10th Anniversary Edition: The Then and There of Queer Futurity

José Esteban Muñoz

Published by New York University Press 2019

Cruising Utopia, 10th Anniversary Edition

The Then and There of Queer Futurity

José Esteban Muñoz
Preface by: Joshua Chambers-Letson , Tavia Nyong'o and Ann Pellegrini

Volume 50 in the series Sexual Cultures

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479868780.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

A 10th anniversary edition of this field defining work—an intellectual inspiration for a generation of LGBTQ scholars

Cruising Utopia arrived in 2009 to insist that queerness must be reimagined as a futurity-bound phenomenon, an insistence on the potentiality of another world that would crack open the pragmatic present. Part manifesto, part love-letter to the past and the future, José Esteban Muñoz argued that the here and now were not enough and issued an urgent call for the revivification of the queer political imagination.

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. This 10th anniversary edition celebrates the lasting impact that Cruising Utopia has had on the decade of queer of color critique that followed and introduces a new generation of readers to a future not yet here.

Author / Editor information

Muñoz José Esteban :

José Esteban Muñoz (1967–2013) was Professor and Chair of Performance Studies at New York University. He was the author of Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999), Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (10th Anniversary Edition, 2019), and The Sense of Brown (2020). He was co-editor of Pop Out: Queer Warhol (1996) and Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America (1997) and founding co-editor of the Sexual Cultures series at NYU Press.Chambers-Letson Joshua :

Joshua Chambers-Letson is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University and author of After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (2018).Nyong'o Tavia :

Tavia Nyong’o is Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, and Theater & Performance Studies at Yale University and the author of Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (2018).Pellegrini Ann :

Ann Pellegrini is Professor of Performance Studies & Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, and a psychoanalyst in private practice. Their books include Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race and Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (co-authored with Janet R. Jakobsen).José Esteban Muñoz (Author)
José Esteban Muñoz (1967–2013) was Professor and Chair of Performance Studies at New York University. He was the author of Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999), Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (10th Anniversary Edition, 2019), and The Sense of Brown (2020). He was co-editor of Pop Out: Queer Warhol (1996) and Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America (1997) and founding co-editor of the Sexual Cultures series at NYU Press.

Joshua Chambers-Letson (Foreword by)
Joshua Chambers-Letson is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University and author of After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (2018).

Tavia Nyong'o (Foreword by)
Tavia Nyong’o is Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, and Theater & Performance Studies at Yale University and the author of Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (2018).

Ann Pellegrini (Foreword by)
Ann Pellegrini is Professor of Performance Studies & Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, and a psychoanalyst in private practice. Their books include Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race and Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (co-authored with Janet R. Jakobsen).

Reviews

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. Casting his vision of a radical gay aesthetic through the prisms of literature, photography and performance, the author dismisses commonplace concerns like same-sex marriage as desires for "mere inclusion" in a "corrupt" mainstream. More defiantly, he exalts the persistence of commercial sex spaces in the face of ‘antisex and homphobic policings,’ and celebrates the overlay of punk and queer in performance spaces.

Fred Moten, author of In the Break:
Brilliant, extraordinary, and necessary, Muñoz’s critical refusal of queer pragmatism, his commitment to the utopian force of the radical attempt—the radical aesthetic, erotic, and philosophical experiment—is indispensable in an historical moment characterized by political surrender and intellectual timidity passing itself off as boldness.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Foreword Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xix
Cruising Utopia
Introduction: Feeling Utopia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2. Ghosts of Public Sex: Utopian Longings, Queer Memories Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
3. The Future Is in the Present: Sexual Avant- Gardes and the Performance of Utopia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
4. Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling: Approaching Kevin Aviance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
5. Cruising the Toilet: LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Radical Black Traditions, and Queer Futurity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
6. Stages: Queers, Punks, and the Utopian Performative Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
7. Utopia’s Seating Chart: Ray Johnson, Jill Johnston, and Queer Intermedia as System Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
8. Just Like Heaven: Queer Utopian Art and the Aesthetic Dimension Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
9. A Jeté Out the Window: Fred Herko’s Incandescent Illumination Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
10. After Jack: Queer Failure, Queer Virtuosity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Conclusion: “Take Ecstasy with Me” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Two Additional Essays
Race, Sex, and the Incommensurate: Gary Fisher with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Hope in the Face of Heartbreak Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Edition: 2nd edition
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Illustrations
- Other: 8 Illustrations, color, 23 black and white illustrations

eBook

Published: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 9781479868780