Friday, July 17, 2015

Argonauts


"Homonormativity seems to me a natural consequence of the decriminalization of homosexuality: once something is no longer illicit, punishable, pathologized, or used as a lawful basis for raw discrimination or acts of violence, that phenomenon will no longer be able to represent or deliver on subversion, the subcultural, the underground, the fringe, in the same way. That's why nihilist pervs like painter Francis Bacon have gone so far as to say that they wish that the death penalty was still the punishment for homosexuality, or why outlaw fetishists like Bruce Benderson seek homosexual adventures in countries such as Romania, where one can still be imprisoned for merely hitting on someone of the same sex. "I still see homosexuality as a narrative of urban adventure, a chance to cross not only sex barriers but class and age barriers, while breaking a few laws in the process  and all for the sake of pleasure. If not, I might as well be straight," Benderson says."

Graywolf  Press recently published The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. Other excellent books by Maggie Nelson include The Art of Curuelty (2012) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (2007).