Time’s Tangles

Michael O'Rourke

Elizabeth Freeman admits that in this book she is committed to overcloseness, to an overreading practice as overdetermined as queerness itself. She explains that “’Queer’ cannot signal a purely deconstructive move or position of pure negativity” because that would “risk … Continue reading “Time’s Tangles”

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Response

Elizabeth Freeman

I’d like to begin with Ben Davies’s concept of “slow reading” as a way of marking the deep pleasures, anxieties, and inspiration I felt reading these responses to Time Binds.   “Through reading slowly,” Davies writes, “we put ourselves at risk … Continue reading “Response”

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The Queer Shamed and Shame Queered

Darnell Moore

Sex work, which I knew nothing about while standing with deep longing and trepidation moving in my body, was not what I intended to provide. No, I wanted to perform love work and traveling to the netherworld of ambiguity was, in my mind, well-worth it. I sought after liberation: freedom from the anxieties of heteronormativitity. And, if I am honest, I wanted to have boundless sex with another man in a “world” that did not create me, but in one that I created. And isn’t it the case that we, queers, are often in search of other worlds because we have been shamed in this one? Read more

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Speculative Life: An Introduction

Jayna Brown and Alexis Lothian

In our dystopian present, the term speculation is associated with an epistemology of greed, a sanctioned terrorism, and a new dimension of imperialism no longer based in production but in abstract futures. But speculation means something else for those who refuse to give its logic over to power and profit.

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Eric Stanley interview on KPFA radio

Social Text Collective

Listen to an interview with Eric Stanley about his article “Near Life, Queer Death: Overkill and Ontological Capture” from Social Text 107, our current issue. His article is a fascinating interrogation of how queer ontology and violence against queers can be seen as a constitutive part of liberal democracy. He offers the concept overkill to denote the type of violence against queers which goes beyond death.

KPFA radio is a listener-funded progressive talk and music radio station broadcast from Berkeley, California. Stanley will appear on Against the Grain, a program dedicated to in-depth analysis and commentary on issues important to progressive and radical thinking. The program is co-hosted and co-produced by Sasha Lilley and C.S. Soong.

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Queer Suicide: An Introduction to the Teach-In

eng-beng lim

With so much affect percolating in the public discourse around the recent spate of gay teen suicides, what can an academic teach-in offer vis-à-vis these events? This Periscope dossier features an eclectic collection of essays, blogs, position papers, and op-eds from a multidisciplinary group of scholars zeroing in on a spectrum of issues, from gay rage and new technologies of sexuality to anti-bullying legislation. It organizes a kind of online teach-in, a portal to the multiple conversations and action happening around the country about gay teen suicide.

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It Gets Worse…

jack halberstam

  At bullybloggers, the blogging site that Lisa Duggan, Jose Munoz and Tavia Nyong’o and I sometimes call our internet home, we believe in bullies. No, not those kinds of bullies, not Tennessee Williams’s no-necked monsters, the brutish boys who … Continue reading “It Gets Worse…”

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Gay Rage

joon oluchi lee

  Suicide is an act of violence. Most of the recent spate of suicides committed by young gay men have been attributed to homophobic bullying. But killing oneself is not necessarily an act of fear and escape. The one who … Continue reading “Gay Rage”

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No Kid Play

eng-beng lim

  Of the many questions raised in the academy as well as the blogosphere, one stands out for its poignancy and compassion: are we as a society capable of loving queer kids? Artist David Wojnarowicz’s 1990 image, Untitled (One Day … Continue reading “No Kid Play”

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