Hand-wringing conversations about queer theory, its continued viability, its expiration date, and its applicability to a range of subjects and objects have been at the heart of the field since its inception in the early 1990s. This essay argues that, … Continue reading “Queer Fundamentalism”
Issue: Issue 121 Winter 2014
It’s Not about Anything
kandice chuhThough more prominently known as a performance studies scholar and queer and critical race theorist, José Esteban Muñoz is cast in this essay as a theorist of the aesthetic. Informed by the ways that Muñoz offers a worldly pedagogy and … Continue reading “It’s Not about Anything”
Amazeballs [ink on paper]
Jibz CameronWildness, Loss, Death
jack halberstamIn the last year of his brilliant career, José Esteban Muñoz flirted with “the wild” and considered the possibility that this term, even with its blighted colonial etymology, might be one of the building blocks of a new critical vocabulary … Continue reading “Wildness, Loss, Death”
Unpacking My Files: My Life as a Queer Brigadista
José QuirogaOriginally delivered as a talk in a New York University conference titled Queer Cuba, organized by José Esteban Muñoz and others, this essay explores the present and the past histories of homosexuality and revolution, and it zeroes in on the … Continue reading “Unpacking My Files: My Life as a Queer Brigadista”
Affective Difference
david l. engThis essay is a tribute to José Esteban Muñoz (1967–2013). It explores Muñoz’s engagement with psychoanalytic theory and affective difference as they play out in queer theory’s “antisocial thesis.” I suggest that Muñoz’s conception of racial identity as a performative … Continue reading “Affective Difference”
Theory Hogs of the Political Unconscious
Jonathan BellerThis essay is a meditation on the emergence of the concept of “queer futurity” based upon the author’s reflections on the life of José Esteban Muñoz and the author’s mourning upon the occasion of his death. The essay considers Muñoz’s … Continue reading “Theory Hogs of the Political Unconscious”
Rock Pigeons (Feral/Domestic) [performance]
Michael WangIt’s Kinda Cold Out Here: A Poem Assembled from Correspondence, with an Introduction
Jorge CortiñasThis piece is a poem assembled from SMS texts, e-mails, letters, book dedications, and notes authored by José Esteban Muñoz and sent over the course of several years to some of his close friends and collaborators. An introduction to the … Continue reading “It’s Kinda Cold Out Here: A Poem Assembled from Correspondence, with an Introduction”