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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.
Price: $31.00
Pages: 280
Publisher: NYU Press
Imprint: NYU Press
Series: Sexual Cultures
Publication Date:
23 April 2019
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781479874569
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies
"A cult classic... Beloved... Walk away with a sharper vision of what our future world could look like, and a burning desire to hang on to that vision."
"Brilliant, extraordinary, and necessary, Muñoz’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."
— Fred Moten, author of In the Break
"Gay liberation's activist past and pragmatic present are merely prologue to a queer cultural future, Muñoz 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."
"In the course of an introduction, a conclusion, and the ten lush chapters in between, Cruising Utopia elaborates an archive of queer aesthetic practices from the present and the recent past."
— Kevin Floyd
"Muñoz takes Ernst Bloch as his Virgil as he descends into the dark woods of futurity looking for signposts along the way that will guide him to a place of hope, belonging, queerness and quirkiness. Refusing to simply sign on to the & anti-relational, anti-future brand of queer theory espoused by Edelman, Bersani and others, Muñoz insists that for some queers, particularly for queers of color, hope is something one cannot afford to lose and for them giving up on futurity is not an option."
— Jack Halberstam, author of In a Queer Time and Place
"In this interesting study of queerness and identity politics, Munoz (performance studies, New York Univ.) invites readers to look beyond the immediate present and toward a queer future."
"In the decade since its publication, Cruising Utopia has been influential across and beyond a range of academic disciplines. This tenth anniversary edition — published six years after Muñoz’s death in 2013 — includes two unpublished essays that extend the scope of the original project...Muñoz investigates a strain of queer utopianism that he locates in art, poetry and performance from the years surrounding the 1969 Stonewall uprising. The book’s ten chapters each focus on a different theoretical or aesthetic aspect of this work, encompassing queer stages, gesture and ephemera, public sex, failure and virtuosity as well as queer world-making."
— Alex Hoyos Twomey
"José Esteban Muñoz argues that queer criticism should be infused with a “utopian function” that perhaps only a return to political idealism could affect...Structured around ten analytical chapters, and framed by an introduction and a conclusion, the book maps out a multiplicity of utopian feelings across aesthetic works of the past and the present."
— Pablo Assumpção
"Cruising Utopia is a hopelessly hopeful manifesto, a performative and polemical provocation that seeks to counter the stultifying effects of the contemporary gay agenda and the disabling nihilism of contemporary queer theory through an affective reanimation of critical idealism."
— Sara Warner
"[This] book embraces the movement between the "no-longer-conscious" and the "not yet-here" to carve out a history of "doing" that is always on the horizon, exhorting us to refuse stultifying hierarchies, in search of queer collectives."
— Anjali Arondekar
"This is, hands down, my favorite book of queer theory of all time. I think about it all the time.... It changed my life for real."
"Muñoz’s work generously moves beyond citationality, moving into the realm of doing his ideas in everyday thought and life."
— Marcos Gonsalez
"The queer of color intellectual formation that Muñoz contributed so much to will remain the object of debate and contestation, which is in itself a good thing... We do indeed carry our dead into new battles that we must fight in their name, but also in ours."
— Tavia Nyong’o
"Brilliant, extraordinary, and necessary, Muñoz’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."
— Fred Moten, author of In the Break
"Gay liberation's activist past and pragmatic present are merely prologue to a queer cultural future, Muñoz 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."
"In the course of an introduction, a conclusion, and the ten lush chapters in between, Cruising Utopia elaborates an archive of queer aesthetic practices from the present and the recent past."
— Kevin Floyd
"Muñoz takes Ernst Bloch as his Virgil as he descends into the dark woods of futurity looking for signposts along the way that will guide him to a place of hope, belonging, queerness and quirkiness. Refusing to simply sign on to the & anti-relational, anti-future brand of queer theory espoused by Edelman, Bersani and others, Muñoz insists that for some queers, particularly for queers of color, hope is something one cannot afford to lose and for them giving up on futurity is not an option."
— Jack Halberstam, author of In a Queer Time and Place
"In this interesting study of queerness and identity politics, Munoz (performance studies, New York Univ.) invites readers to look beyond the immediate present and toward a queer future."
"In the decade since its publication, Cruising Utopia has been influential across and beyond a range of academic disciplines. This tenth anniversary edition — published six years after Muñoz’s death in 2013 — includes two unpublished essays that extend the scope of the original project...Muñoz investigates a strain of queer utopianism that he locates in art, poetry and performance from the years surrounding the 1969 Stonewall uprising. The book’s ten chapters each focus on a different theoretical or aesthetic aspect of this work, encompassing queer stages, gesture and ephemera, public sex, failure and virtuosity as well as queer world-making."
— Alex Hoyos Twomey
"José Esteban Muñoz argues that queer criticism should be infused with a “utopian function” that perhaps only a return to political idealism could affect...Structured around ten analytical chapters, and framed by an introduction and a conclusion, the book maps out a multiplicity of utopian feelings across aesthetic works of the past and the present."
— Pablo Assumpção
"Cruising Utopia is a hopelessly hopeful manifesto, a performative and polemical provocation that seeks to counter the stultifying effects of the contemporary gay agenda and the disabling nihilism of contemporary queer theory through an affective reanimation of critical idealism."
— Sara Warner
"[This] book embraces the movement between the "no-longer-conscious" and the "not yet-here" to carve out a history of "doing" that is always on the horizon, exhorting us to refuse stultifying hierarchies, in search of queer collectives."
— Anjali Arondekar
"This is, hands down, my favorite book of queer theory of all time. I think about it all the time.... It changed my life for real."
"Muñoz’s work generously moves beyond citationality, moving into the realm of doing his ideas in everyday thought and life."
— Marcos Gonsalez
"The queer of color intellectual formation that Muñoz contributed so much to will remain the object of debate and contestation, which is in itself a good thing... We do indeed carry our dead into new battles that we must fight in their name, but also in ours."
— Tavia Nyong’o
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).
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).