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Trading Futures: Queer Theory's Anti-Antirelational Turn Drew Daniel Johns Hopkins University, Drewdaniel@Jhu.Edu Criticism Volume 52 Issue 2 Honoring Eve: A Special Issue on the Work of Article 19 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick 2010 Trading Futures: Queer Theory's Anti-antirelational Turn Drew Daniel Johns Hopkins University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism Recommended Citation Daniel, Drew (2010) "Trading Futures: Queer Theory's Anti-antirelational Turn," Criticism: Vol. 52: Iss. 2, Article 19. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol52/iss2/19 Trading FutureS: José esteban Muñoz’s new book fights for the future of a field— QUeer Theory’S queer theory—arguably defined aNTI-aNTI- by the differences between two relaTIoNal TUrN works from its recent past: Mu- Drew Daniel ñoz’s own Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Pol- itics (1999) and lee edelman’s No Cruising Utopia: The Then and Future: Queer Theory and the Death There of Queer Futurity by José Drive (2004).1 Insofar as Cruising esteban Muñoz. Sexual Cultures Utopia marries an argument of series. New york City: New york crankily counterintuitive original- University Press, 2009. Pp. 240, 29 ity to whipsmart readings of both illustrations. $19.00 paper. familiar and underground queer artworks, it more than succeeds in living up to the high standard set by his previous book. Just as Dis- identifications broke with then-pre- vailing critical orthodoxies of gay affirmation and belonging in its evocation of the anti-identitarian political complexities lurking in an eclectic archive comprising every- thing from Mapplethorpe photos to the performances of ela Troy- ano to the lyrics of the punk band X, so too Cruising Utopia gate- crashes the queer theory conversa- tion via readings of a dazzling array of poems, visual artworks, performances, and collective polit- ical actions. Specifically, Cruising Utopia attempts to reorient queer studies away from the antirela- tional turn exemplified by the work of leo Bersani and lee edel- man, advocating instead a politi- cally idealist utopian vision of queerness as the futurity of the “not yet here.” If lee edelman’s No Future is on its way to being the Criticism, Spring 2010, Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 325–330. ISSN: 0011-1589. 325 © 2011 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201-1309. 326 DreW DaNIel most widely read and passionately advocacy that drives this wildly het- debated work of queer theory of erogeneous mixtape of queer utopi- the decade that followed Disidenti- ans into unforeseen alignment. In a fications, then Cruising Utopia not dizzying series of cross-fades and only continues Muñoz’s own evolv- chemtrails, the antilandlord rants ing critical trajectory, but also of radical filmmaker Jack Smith constitutes a suitably un-timely sound different when aligned with rejoinder to edelman’s apocalyptic the scribbled curriculum vitae of endgame. I’d like to first describe tragic speed-freak dancer Fred Muñoz’s book on its own terms herko, whose manic energy finds and then evaluate it as a response itself complemented and coun- to edelman’s argument. tered by the frantic performance Muñoz’s book is marked by an work of Jibz Cameron (Dynasty ongoing dialectical tension be- handbag), whose antivirtuosity tween collectivity and individual- seems anticipated and interlocked ity, between a political desire to with the hermetic deadpan of col- desubjectivize queerness on behalf lagist ray Johnson. For all its rich of the collective and an art-histori- insight into the often tense affec- cal and literary-critical practice tive networks of queer friendships of close reading—beautifully—the and communal working groups work of particular poets, painters, (from the collaborators on the un- photographers, and performance derground literary journal The artists. Muñoz wears this elasticity Floating Bear to the Judson Memo- on his sleeve, as in his early formu- rial Church to the agitprop sticker lation that “[c]oncrete utopias. campaigners “f.a.g.” [feminist ac- are the hopes of a collective, an tion group]), Muñoz’s book is at its emergent group, or even the solitary most arresting when he focuses in oddball who is the one who dreams on particular artworks with these for many” (3, italics mine). This cross-pollinations in mind and “even” is something of a tell, for finds the impulse towards collec- Muñoz’s heart belongs to the odd- tive futurity crystallized in an iso- balls, and it is his historically ex- lated aesthetic gesture. tended cabal of isolated queer Such collectivity can emerge in provocateurs who constitute the startling places. a case in point is true collectivity that organizes this Muñoz’s response to andy War- book. In ten chapters teeming with hol’s Silver Clouds, a set design of sharp close readings and inspired metallic balloons first fabricated theoretical and artistic odd couples for leo Castelli in 1966 and im- (John giorno and Theodor adorno! mortalized in press photos for the Felix gonzalez-Torres and Darby Velvet Underground. Pushing off Crash!), Cruising Utopia’s great from the account of Narcissus in strength is the passionate critical herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civili- oN MUÑoZ’S CRUISING UTOPIA 327 zation (written in 1955; published ance, Muñoz movingly captures in 1956), Muñoz thinks these shim- the way that a queer collective ex- mering balloons as works of por- perience (an orgy, a “riot,” a night- traiture freed of the celebrity club audience, a punk-show image, open to all comers, promis- parking lot, a sweaty dance floor) cuous, permissive, and radically becomes a site in which queer uto- pleasurable: “[T]o gaze into the pian feelings are in transit across pillows’ reflective surface is to par- and between multiple bodies. The ticipate in the modality of contem- unity of “the mass” is pluralized by plation that is an interruption in an imaginative claiming of “our the mandates to labor, toil, and sac- masses.” rifice that the performance princi- Sometimes, the very star power ple prescribes” (137). The sheerest of the particular artists, artworks, of surfaces becomes a doorway to and examples marshaled by Cruis- deindividualizing merger and re- ing Utopia accidentally overwhelms volt. recalibrating ready-to-hand the very fragility Muñoz hopes to clichés about Warhol as the high celebrate. a case in point: John priest(ess) of fashionable slickness giorno’s narration of an orgy fea- and android cool, it’s a reading that turing Keith haring veers towards adroitly pulls Warhol towards the name-dropping rather than a com- philosophical and political orbit of munal blur of anonymous sex. Mu- Muñoz’s chosen constellation of ñoz is aware of this issue within his Frankfurt school thinkers. Much chosen sources, but I wonder of the book is taken up with a salu- whether there isn’t a second-order tary reintroduction of the writings version of this problem within the of ernst Bloch—in particular, The book itself, given the very star- Principle of Hope (1938–47)—to studded syllabus that he has con- the contemporary theoretical land- vened. There is a powerfully scape, but in the tenderness of his estranging strength to Muñoz’s engagement with minute, telling gaze as it turns to James Schuyler’s details Muñoz’s work recalls the “a photograph” (1974), Frank celebrated reading of “an old o’hara’s “having a Coke with Pitcher” at the beginning of Bloch’s you” (1960), and elizabeth Bish- The Spirit of Utopia (1918). Whether op’s “one art” (1975) in search of he is transmitting John giorno and futurity, ecstasy, and emergence. Samuel r. Delany’s piquant anec- even so, I was prodded to wonder dotes of public sex, or describing if there might not be other ways of the “sick camp” of Kiki & herb trying to construct a social ontol- (Justin Bond and Kenny Mell- ogy of queer utopian collectivity man), or transcribing the ephem- through a blurring of particular eral movements of dancer and responsibility rather than through nightclub performer Kevin avi- a tour of the pantheon, however 328 DreW DaNIel genuinely risky and novel. To be Nowadays, keeping it positive is sure, these more canonically famil- hard work. given the harm en- iar figures are counterbalanced dured and damage done to queers with more underground exem- while living under the normative plars of queer futurity: if perfor- rigors of “straight time,” the dark mance artist Kalup linzy has by glamour of antirelational neg- now achieved a richly deserved ativity is undeniably tempting. art-star apotheosis, that fate still accordingly, the manic pace of awaits Dynasty handbag and My Cruising Utopia’s attempts to achieve Barbarian. But is there an alterna- escape velocity from that very neg- tive to the name game itself? Push- ativity risks looking like sublation ing off from Kevin McCarty’s or reaction rather than a real alter- (gorgeously reproduced) color pho- native. at times, the processual tographs of the depopulated stages and tentative emergence of the of gay bars and punk clubs, are utopian spark threatens to collapse there ways to trace collective expe- under the weight of the latent vir- riences and behaviors and affects ulence of Muñoz’s own exemplary that treat “the scene” rather than material: if the suicides of ray “the person” as the essential level Johnson and Fred herko consti- of description? are there queer tute melancholy slippages into the forms that already formally enact “nothing” that adjoins the utopian the collectivity and ephemerality position, the group gay-bashing of that Muñoz stakes his hopes upon? Kevin aviance offers a threatening Whether uptown or downtown,
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