Periscope articles and content
Football fans can be divided, somewhat crudely, into two categories: those attracted to the game for aesthetic gratification, and those whose fandom is rather driven by feelings of group solidarity. These categories are not mutually exclusive. A beautiful move acquires … Continue reading “World Cup Soccer: Enjoyment and Identification”
On the eve of Ghana’s fateful loss to Uruguay in the quarterfinals, South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, declared them the Black Stars of Africa. Locals joined their compatriots across the continent in willing the Black Stars on. … Continue reading “Africa's World Cup?”
Click here to download a .pdf of Patrick Bond’s presentation.
As I sat down to write these comments, I found myself thinking of another time and place, over ten years ago, when I initially encountered José Muñoz’s first book Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Upon … Continue reading “The Utopian in the Everyday”
For those of you who are concerned about the so-called “Gay Agenda,” have no fear. The agenda is alive and well and its chief strategist is usually located in a bunker in the compound known as Washington Square Village. … Continue reading “Fuller, Vaster, Brighter”
My title plays with as it traces a number of imbedded citations. First it conjoins the titles of the two texts that will concern, and, in their conjunction, provoke, me here . One echoes the title of José Esteban Muñoz’s … Continue reading “"Good as Yesterday"'s Queer Futurity: Muñoz with Muñoze”
Let’s think about the “then and there” in the subtitle of Cruising Utopia: the Then and There of Queer Futurity, for these deictics are insistently aligned with the now-central question of how to induce utopian futures from within a negating present. The answer of course is that the aesthetic provides the affective ballast and concrete means to induce exuberant futures.
These responses to Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity situate the project in extremely valuable and useful ways. These readers are all ideal for me: thus indicating my sense of ideality as incalculable and expansive. In each … Continue reading “Response”
We live in a time when the confrontation of reality with reason requires us to dwell on apocalyptic questions. Unfortunately, as Fredric Jameson observed over a decade ago, “It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing … Continue reading “Introduction”
The simple three steps required to escape the greenhouse-gas governance gridlock between global and especially US elites are easy to see, though United Nations officials and nearly all the world’s climate negotiators refuse to take them: • Make dramatic … Continue reading “Circumventing the climate cul-de-sac: Charleston-Cochabamba-Caracas versus Kyoto-Copenhagen-Cancun”
Over the last decade, the word “sustainability” has become a compulsively used word to get at some unspecified but ubiquitous notion of an environmentally ethical and conscious way of life. Businesses, cities, neighborhoods, buildings, and lifestyles can all be praised … Continue reading “Sustainability as Disavowal”
Scene: The dark, vaguely panoptic courtyard of Vestre Faengsel, one of the ‘correction facilities’ that has been turned into an aptly named ‘climate prison’ for the duration of the ‘COP15’ United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen. The ‘climate … Continue reading “Minority report from Copenhagen”
What happened after Copenhagen? Claims of success and blame for who collapsed the talks fly from many sides of many aisles. In his 18 December 2010 plenary speech to the heads of state attending the 15th Conference of the Parties … Continue reading “Considering Polyvalent Counter-Hegemonic Climate Justice Resistance Movements”
The epicenter of the earthquake that brought Haiti to her knees on January 12, 2010 is located about seven or eight miles from my childhood neighborhood of Fontamara, just outside of Port-au-Prince proper. I was leaving my office at NYU, … Continue reading “Treading Contradictions and Ambiguities”
On the second seamlessly dark night after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010, I was lying against the unusually cold earth, and for the first time since that initial tremble, sleeping. Once packed into precarious dwellings … Continue reading “State Bricolage”
