Jack Halberstam commemorates the life, work, and friendship of José Esteban Muñoz on Bully Bloggers, a queer blog site featuring the collaborations of Muñoz, Halberstam, Lisa Duggan, and Tavia Nyong’o.
Cruising Utopia
To commemorate José Esteban Muñoz’s brilliant work following his untimely death on December 3, 2013, and to remind readers of the vibrant discussions he helped catalyze, we’ve reposted this special dossier on Cruising Utopia—alongside remembrances of Muñoz by two colleagues and fellow Social Text collective members, Jack Halberstam and Ann Pellegrini. In the dossier below, originally published in 2010, Lauren Berlant, Barbara Browning, Gayatri Gopinath, and Ricardo Ortiz offer critical appreciations of José Esteban Muñoz’s 2009 book, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, followed by Muñoz’s response to his respondents. Performance art legend Vaginal Davis provides the cover image with an original illustration inspired by Cruising Utopia.
For José
Ann PellegriniWriting for the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, Ann Pellegrini offers the following words on the passing of brilliant and beloved colleague and friend, José Esteban Muñoz.
The Utopian in the Everyday
gayatri gopinath
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”
Fuller, Vaster, Brighter
Barbara Browning
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”
"Good as Yesterday"'s Queer Futurity: Muñoz with Muñoze
ricardo ortiz
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”
The Aesthetic Utopian
lauren berlant
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.
Response
José Esteban Muñoz
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”