Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity

244 Pages·2009·7.102 MB·English

by  Jose Esteban Muñoz

Cruising Utopia
SEXUAL CULTURES
General Editors: José Esteban Muñoz and Ann Pellegrini
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue
Samuel R. Delany
Private Affairs: Critical Ventures in the Culture of Social Relations
Phillip Brian Harper
In Your Face: 9 Sexual Studies
Mandy Merck
Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America
José Quiroga
Murdering Masculinities:
Fantasies of Gender and Violence in the American Crime Novel
Greg Forter
Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest
Edited by Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan
Black Gay Man: Essays
Robert Reid Pharr, Foreword by Samuel R. Delany
Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion
Edited by María Carla Sánchez and Linda Schlossberg
The Explanation for Everything: Essays on Sexual Subjectivity
Paul Morrison
The Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Theater
Edited by Alisa Solomon and Framji Minwalla
Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism
Edited by Arnaldo Cruz Malavé and Martin F. Manalansan IV
Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces
Juana María Rodríguez
Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance
Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini
Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture
Frances Négron-Muntaner
Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era
Marlon Ross
In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives
Judith Halberstam
Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch:
Essays on Race and Sexuality in the U.S.
Dwight A. McBride
God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Violence
Michael Cobb
Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual
Robert Reid-Pharr
The Latino Body:
Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory
Lázaro Lima
Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America
Dana Luciano
Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity
José Esteban Muñoz
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Cruising Utopia
The Then and There of Queer Futurity
José Esteban Muñoz
(cid:4)
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2009 by New York University
All rights reserved
“For Freddy, Fucking Again,” poem by Diane di Prima, from Freddie Poems
(Point Reyes, CA: Eidolon Editions, 1974). Courtesy of the author.
“Having a Coke with You,” from The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, by Frank
O’Hara, edited by Donald Allen. Copyright © 1971 by Maureen Granville-Smith,
Administratrix of The Estate of Frank O’Hara. Reprinted by permission of
Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
“A photograph,” Collected Poems, by James Schuyler. Copyright © 1993 by the Estate
of James Schuyler. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
“One Art,” from The Complete Poems, 1927–1979, by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright
© 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Muñoz, José Esteban
Cruising utopia : the then and there of queer futurity / José Esteban Muñoz.
p. cm. — (Sexual cultures)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978–0–8147–5727–7 (cl : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0–8147–5727–8 (cl : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978–0–8147–5728–4 (pb : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0–8147–5728–6 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Queer theory. 2. Utopias. 3. Homosexuality and art. 4. Performance art. I. Title.
HQ76.25.M86 2009
306.7601—dc22 2009021714
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials
to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Feeling Utopia 1
1 Queerness as Horizon: 19
Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism
2 Ghosts of Public Sex: Utopian Longings, Queer Memories 33
3 The Future Is in the Present: Sexual Avant-Gardes 49
and the Performance of Utopia
4 Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling: 65
Approaching Kevin Aviance
5 Cruising the Toilet: LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, 83
Radical Black Traditions, and Queer Futurity
6 Stages: Queers, Punks, and the Utopian Performative 97
7 Utopia’s Seating Chart: Ray Johnson, Jill Johnston, and 115
Queer Intermedia as System
8 Just Like Heaven: 131
Queer Utopian Art and the Aesthetic Dimension
9 A Jeté Out the Window: Fred Herko’s Incandescent Illumination 147
10 After Jack: Queer Failure, Queer Virtuosity 169
Conclusion: “Take Ecstasy with Me” 185
Notes 191
Bibliography 209
Index 217
About the Author 223
Color illustrations follow page 84
vii
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Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK HAS been in the works for over ten years. I cannot
hope to properly acknowledge all the people who have been supportive
of the writing and research that went into these pages. I have presented
the writing that became these chapters at seemingly countless universities,
museums, performance spaces, and conferences. At these various institu-
tions many audiences listened to this work and engaged in beneficial ways.
Queer friendship has proven to be the condition of possibility for imagin-
ing what queerness can and should mean. The actual relational circuits I
am lucky enough to find myself belonging to whet my desire for future
collectivity.
I have had the gift of extraordinary research assistance. Joshua Cham-
bers-Letson has invested so much of his own energy and intelligence in
this book. Sujay Pandit has been indispensable in my completing this proj-
ect. The manuscript benefited from the attention of Julia Steinmetz and
Chelsea Adewunmi. So many excellent students have proven to be such
great interlocutors for this book as it emerged. This list will be woefully
incomplete: Hypatia Vourloumis, Jeanne Vacarro, Frank Leon Roberts,
Sandra Ruiz, Katie Brewer-Ball, Eser Selen, Tina Majkowski, Karen Jamie,
Ellen Cleghorne, Beth Stinson, Alex Pittman, Lydia Brawner, Roy Perez,
Albert Laguna, Andre Carrington, Leticia Alvardo, Anna Fischer, Jonathan
Mullins, Ronak Kapadia, Stephanie Weiss, and Justin Leroy. One of the
greatest rewards in teaching is when your former students become your
colleagues and friends: there are no better examples of this in my life than
Christine Balance, Ricardo Montez, and Alexandra Vazquez. Also in that
category is Shane Vogel, who also gave me great feedback on this volume.
I teach in a relatively small department that I have chaired for the past
few years, and I am grateful for the climate of mutual support and respect
achieved in the Department of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the
Arts at NYU. Colleagues like Barbara Browning, Karen Shimakawa, Rich-
ard Schenchner, Andre Lepcki, Diana Taylor, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimb-
let, Allen Weiss, Anna Deavere Smith, Deborah Kapchan, Tavia Nyong’o,
ix