Cruising utopia

the then and there of queer futurity

223 pages

English language

Published Jan. 8, 2009 by New York University Press.

ISBN:
978-0-8147-5727-7
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OCLC Number:
326466222

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2 stars (1 review)

The LGBT agenda for too long has been dominated by pragmatic issues like same-sex marriage and gays in the military. It has been stifled by this myopic focus on the present, which is short-sighted and assimilationist.

Cruising Utopia seeks to break the present stagnancy by cruising ahead. Drawing on the work of Ernst Bloch, José Esteban Muñoz recalls the queer past for guidance in presaging its future. He considers the work of seminal artists and writers such as Andy Warhol, LeRoi Jones, Frank O'Hara, Ray Johnson, Fred Herko, Samuel Delany, and Elizabeth Bishop, alongside contemporary performance and visual artists like Dynasty Handbag, My Barbarian, Luke Dowd, Tony Just, and Kevin McCarty in order to decipher the anticipatory illumination of art and its uncanny ability to open windows to the future.

In a startling repudiation of what the LGBT movement has held dear, Muñoz contends that queerness is instead a futurity …

1 edition

Review of 'Cruising utopia' on Goodreads

2 stars

This review quite eloquently sums up a lot of what I think, so, here: www.goodreads.com/review/show/1039578686?book_show_action=true

I
agree that Muñoz is a great close reader, and those segments where he's only doing that were so great. If this book had been just a document of queer histories and art criticism, I would give it a higher rating. (The chapter on stages is brilliant and effective!) But everything else this books tries to do is so utterly boring to me. As the other reviewer states, it's certainly good at challenging the "majoritarian, normative, capitalist pig focus of the gay world today". But to me, that's part of what annoys me both about this book and about queer theory: it's too committed to being in conversation with and challenging "traditional" and "normative" culture in basic ways. And to write a book that is largely a manifesto about pursuing a "queer utopia" …