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Welcome back to the reliably erratic review of José Esteban Muñoz' Cruising Utopia: The There and Then of Queer Futurity. This trebleweek, we're talking about "Stages: Queers, Punks, and the Utopian Performative."
Muñoz was a queer punk! So was I, after a fashion, though I wasn't terribly good at it. Like the last chapter, this discussion activated my own queer nostalgia -- and therefore perhaps hope.
As I consume further chapters, I more and more admire Muñoz' ability to layer new nuance onto the concept of utopia as a mechanism for imagining queer futures. It isn't a gimmick: each of these essays genuinely illuminates another way to think with the idea.
I found this the most conceptually straightforward and emotionally evocative essay so far. Muñoz himself seems to be having a better time -- he's more confident, less hedged, here. His central thesis is that spaces for queer performance create the potential for envisioning more livable, joyful and expressive queer lives.
That makes the idea sound simple, but Muñoz captures, without directly naming it, the almost (or actual) ceremonial quality of such performances -- they way performance is an imaginary thing that makes itself real, where the real here is livable, joyful queer life.
( Utopia is a stage )
What this essay most woke in me was the desire to go out to a queer bar. After a dry spell of many years, we have two new and active and highly aesthetic queer bars, or rather a restaurant and lounge, with regular drag performances featuring drag kings and drag queens. What I would most like is to feel again that sense of potentiality, of another future life with more beauty and pleasure and joy.
{rf}
Muñoz was a queer punk! So was I, after a fashion, though I wasn't terribly good at it. Like the last chapter, this discussion activated my own queer nostalgia -- and therefore perhaps hope.
As I consume further chapters, I more and more admire Muñoz' ability to layer new nuance onto the concept of utopia as a mechanism for imagining queer futures. It isn't a gimmick: each of these essays genuinely illuminates another way to think with the idea.
I found this the most conceptually straightforward and emotionally evocative essay so far. Muñoz himself seems to be having a better time -- he's more confident, less hedged, here. His central thesis is that spaces for queer performance create the potential for envisioning more livable, joyful and expressive queer lives.
That makes the idea sound simple, but Muñoz captures, without directly naming it, the almost (or actual) ceremonial quality of such performances -- they way performance is an imaginary thing that makes itself real, where the real here is livable, joyful queer life.
( Utopia is a stage )
What this essay most woke in me was the desire to go out to a queer bar. After a dry spell of many years, we have two new and active and highly aesthetic queer bars, or rather a restaurant and lounge, with regular drag performances featuring drag kings and drag queens. What I would most like is to feel again that sense of potentiality, of another future life with more beauty and pleasure and joy.
{rf}
