In his own words, Kevin Killian’s “Tagged” was a project in which he photographed “individual artists and poets, mostly male, naked, their junk covered often by a squarish drawing, almost a caricature, of a cock and balls by Raymond Pettibon.” … Continue reading “On Kevin Killian’s “Tagged” Project”
In the time of COVID, I do a lot of laundry. At first it was because I was finally still; no longer traveling so there was more time and a backlog of dirty clothes. Then, it was for other reasons. … Continue reading “Sweat”
It’s something of a relief, when, late in Fascination, Kevin Killian reflects on the cruelty of the youthful romances that he’s been narrating: “…as I look back I see that I had a ruthless streak; I could be horrifyingly manipulative” … Continue reading “Very Good: On Kevin Killian’s Fascination“
The nation state shuts its borders. It has frozen all transit and freezes you into place. The benevolent state, you are told, now fully controls the airways and highways. It sets up roadblocks and checkpoints. It organizes your intimacy. You … Continue reading “The Impossible Ritual”
How do queer studies operate outside Western contexts? What can American queer studies learn from outside of its parochialism? How should American queer studies engage with the non-American ones? These are the underpinning questions behind this post. In the postscript … Continue reading “Pedagogy of the Homeless: Poor Queer Studies in Indonesia”
What is AI? AI is everywhere, but where is it exactly? What does AI look like? What does AI act like? What does AI think like? And, most importantly…how intelligent is AI, really? These questions comprise a mere fraction of … Continue reading “On You Look like a Thing and I Love You“
The new film The Assistant has instigated a breakthrough in the public conversation about sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace. Rave reviews in the mainstream media, including The New Times, the New Yorker, the Daily Beast and Time Out, … Continue reading “On The Assistant“
name/brand on a windy day breaking those hottest Midwestern months where most everything is wishing for death or winter, a single dried petal from that little blue flower with a cute colloquial name, shrunk beyond its living … Continue reading “Four Poems”
Some of the most radical criticism coming out of the university today is the result of an interested desire to conserve the subject of Truth, or the Truth as Subject. Readers of this introduction will likely recognize the epigraph above … Continue reading “Introduction: Can the Subaltern Fabulate?”
Years ago, at a conference, Tavia and I talked about what to do in our responses to the theoretical turn to negativity in black studies. The sound of this turn was roaring all around us, and we had to shout … Continue reading “In Our Dark Times”
“I have a right to show my color, darling! I am beautiful and I know I’m beautiful!” The opening pages of Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life summon the specter of Crystal Labeija. In a now-iconic scene from the … Continue reading “Afro-Fabulating in the Shadows”
What does it feel like to describe an appearance that hasn’t quite come into being? To conjure a sensation at the edges of haptic awareness? To make a case for a time yet to announce itself as present and always … Continue reading “Dark Descriptions of Black Appearance”
Film plays an important role in Tavia Nyong’o’s Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life and offers a kind of historical starting point in the 60s and 70s for the contemporary span this book covers. Nyong’o introduces his project via … Continue reading “A Dark Cinema”
Blackness is both elastic and not. Blackness is ascribed to many who can trace ancestry to the African diaspora, a relation that has been determined by the transatlantic slave trade. Here, blackness is tethered explicitly to people and their lives. … Continue reading “Blackness, the Virtual, and the Work of Fabulation”
I. There are some things that seem too volatile to be touched, that confound consideration. Moments, that when they appear, time opens up, reaches across space, prods, squeezes, cathecting pain and pleasure. These moments pivot between fragility and indestructibility and … Continue reading “On Having Your Cake and Eating It Too: Black (Diasporic/Nordic) Arts”
