Overview

A 10th anniversary edition of this field defining work—an intellectual inspiration for a generation of LGBTQ scholars Cruising Utopia arrived in 2009 to insist that queerness must be reimagined as a futurity-bound phenomenon, an insistence on the potentiality of another world that would crack open the pragmatic present. Part manifesto, part love-letter to the past and the future, José Esteban Muñoz argued that the here and now were not enough and issued an urgent call for the revivification of the queer political imagination. On the anniversary of its original publication, this edition includes two essays that extend and expand the project of Cruising Utopia, as well as a new foreword by the current editors of Sexual Cultures, the book series he co-founded with Ann Pellegrini 20 years ago. This 10th anniversary edition celebrates the lasting impact that Cruising Utopia has had on the decade of queer of color critique that followed and introduces a new generation of readers to a future not yet here.

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9781479813780

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Reviews

Gay liberation's activist past and pragmatic present are merely prologue to a queer cultural future, Munoz suggests in this critical condemnation of the political status quo. Casting his vision of a radical gay aesthetic through the prisms of literature, photography and performance, the author dismisses commonplace concerns like same-sex marriage as desires for mere inclusion in a corrupt mainstream. More defiantly, he exalts the persistence of commercial sex spaces in the face of 'antisex and homphobic policings,' and celebrates the overlay of punk and queer in performance spaces. * Publishers Weekly * Brilliant, extraordinary, and necessary, Munoz's critical refusal of queer pragmatism, his commitment to the utopian force of the radical attempt-the radical aesthetic, erotic, and philosophical experiment-is indispensable in an historical moment characterized by political surrender and intellectual timidity passing itself off as boldness.

Author Information

José Esteban Muñoz (Author) José Esteban Muñoz (1967–2013) was Professor and Chair of Performance Studies at New York University. He was the author of Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (1999), Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (10th Anniversary Edition, 2019), and The Sense of Brown (2020). He was co-editor of Pop Out: Queer Warhol (1996) and Everynight Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America (1997) and founding co-editor of the Sexual Cultures series at NYU Press. Joshua Chambers-Letson (Foreword by) Joshua Chambers-Letson is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University and author of After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (2018). Tavia Nyong'o (Foreword by) Tavia Nyong’o is Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, and Theater & Performance Studies at Yale University and the author of Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (2018). Ann Pellegrini (Foreword by) Ann Pellegrini is Professor of Performance Studies & Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, and a psychoanalyst in private practice. Their books include Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race and Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (co-authored with Janet R. Jakobsen).

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