Overview

In this provocative and intensely personal new book of essays about love and language, desire and drama, reminiscence, change, and fandom, William J. Simmons takes up Eve Sedgwick’s reparative reading as a challenge to empirical and taxonomical approaches to art, music, and film and instead promotes new ways of discussing them that create community and empathy rather than hierarchies. Specifically, Simmons advocates for incorporating memoir, history, theory, poetry, and even “the cringey admissions of a fanboy” into criticism. Love and Degradation argues for queer feminism’s value to reading and thinking about works by creators as varied as Lana Del Rey, Charlotte Brontë, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and filmmaker Steve McQueen. It also includes essays on Glenn Ligon, Barbara Kruger, and Kristen Stewart. In essence, the essays in this volume represent a series of the author’s “saviors, obsessions, and losses.” A compelling read for students and scholars of art history, queer and gender studies, creative writing, and the study of film, television, and pop culture, this book encourages readers to embrace fandom and raises important questions about the state of queer and feminist discourse.

Full Product Details

Author:   William J. Simmons (New Favorite, LLC)
Publisher:   Pennsylvania State University Press
Imprint:   Pennsylvania State University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 1.10cm , Length: 21.60cm
Weight:   0.227kg
ISBN:  

9780271098944

ISBN 10:   0271098945
Pages:   152
Publication Date:   03 December 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Leaving Calabasas 1. The Presumption of Light: On Toyin Ojih Odutola’s The Treatment 2. Normative Desire / Narrative Desire and the Production of Love in Villette 3. Bad Feminism: On Queer-Feminist Relatability and the Production of Truth in Fleabag 4. Glenn Ligon’s Untitled (Negro Sunshine): Toward a Queer Theory of Post-Critique 5. “Banality Is Sometimes Striking”: On Felix Gonzalez-Torres 6. On Affect and Criticality in Steve McQueen’s Widows 7. A Paucity of Words (for Kristin Scott Thomas) 8. Borderline Personality Disorder in Spencer (for Stankie) 9. Love and the Paraliterary: On Barbara Kruger’s Picture/Readings 10. Deborah Kass: Teenage Dream Conclusion: There Is Only Love / Queerness Is Dead / You Said You Needed Space Notes Index

Reviews

“Simmons seamlessly blends analysis of queer and feminist art with autobiography—the result is incandescent, intimate, and vulnerable. Whether his object of contemplation is art, literature, cinema, or gossip, Simmons positions himself as one of our most expansive and perceptive critics and thinkers.” —Emily Wells,author of A Matter of Appearance

Author Information

William J. Simmons is a writer based in the Santa Clarita Valley. He is the author of Queer Formalism: The Return.

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