intimacy

Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories

beth — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

In a temporally queer attachment of my own, I was bound to Time Binds before it was even published. With versions of the preface, introduction, and three out of four chapters having already appeared in academic journals, Elizabeth Freeman’s arguments had already made an impression on me. This is not to say that Time Binds is a redundant publication. Bound together, the individual pieces only gain in strength, displaying Freeman’s commitment to theorizing the intersections of temporality, queer theory, and the body.

In what might by now be described as a new turn in queer theory—a more self-reflexive turn, a turn that seems to be a pulling back, a slowing down—Freeman is surely one of the leading voices. She describes feeling as though “the point of queer was to always be ahead of actually existing social possibilities.” Instead of this ‘kind’ of queer theory, Freeman describes her commitment to a politics of “trailing behind,” as being “interested in the tail end of things, willing to be bathed in the fading light of whatever has been declared useless.” Time Binds contains captivating and powerful arguments for the need to understand temporality as physical, history as erotic, and the body as a sight that can challenge the temporal limits of heterosexuality and capitalism.

In the first chapter, Freeman focuses on Diane Bonder’s film The Physics of Love (1998), and Bertha Harris' novel Lover (1976), two texts that explore the mother-daughter dynamic. Freeman considers these texts as they utilize the body and the body’s “bad timing” to present a queer challenge the heterogendered and class-marked temporality of familial intimacy. She unpicks how capitalism and heteronormativity depend on a certain temporality and suggest that the body and its queer pleasures may be a site to contest this keeping of time.

In the second chapter, Freeman turns to Elisabeth Subrin’s Shulie (1997) and the work of Canadian artist Allyson Mitchell to consider how ‘lesbian’ and ‘lesbian feminist’ pull on ‘queer'. She introduces and works through what she calls “temporal drag” to consider how the pasts of movements might productively surface in the present, insisting that there is transformative potential in moments that are not quite past, but not entirely present.

In chapter three, Freeman describes “erotohistoriography” as a method for encountering the past as already in the present and the body as a tool “to effect, figure, or perform that encounter.” The body, and its pleasurable responses, in Freeman’s usage, becomes a “form of understanding,” a means to do history. Through tender readings of Frankenstein and Orlando, Freeman pieces together a history of history as physical and considers how bodies in these texts become sites where history is felt—staging the “very queer possibility that encounters with history are bodily encounters, even that they have revivifying and pleasurable effect.”.

Finally, in the last chapter Freeman analyzes Isaac Julien’s The Attendant (1992), following through with her arguments to a site that, she admits, potentially poses troubling conclusions. Namely, the body in sadomasochistic practices as it iterates the past, particularly the horrors of the slave trade. However, through her reading of Julien’s work and S&M practices more generally, Freeman argues for their role as erotohistoriographic practice, and as such they present erotic means of challenging history and rewriting bodily possibilities.

Concluding her thrilling book with a new queer manifesto, Freeman stakes her claim as an influential voice in contemporary queer theory, and asks us to join her, to “use our historically and presently quite creative work with pleasure, sex, and bodies to jam whatever looks like the inevitable.”

Written by: Sam McBean, April 2nd 2011

Emotional Bullshit: The Hidden Plague That Is Threatening to Destroy Your Relationships—And How to Stop It

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 10:42:00 +0000

By Carl Alasko, Ph.D.

Tarcher

Emotional bullshit, however far flung, rarely consists of strategies for conflict aversion. Carl Alasko’s Emotional Bullshit: The Hidden Plague that Is Threatening to Destroy Your Relationships—And How to Stop It consists of strategies for identifying and replacing those habits. Denial, delusion, and blame sneak into our repertoire, to make us look or feel better about our job, our part in a relationship, or role in our family, how far we’ve digressed from our goals and integrity, or keeping promises, to ourselves and others. In some it is tastelessly obvious, in others it is virtually undetected, at least for a while.

Alasko describes three common habits: denial, delusion and blame as a self-camouflaging sequence, in addition to that pesky, prickly good feeling we get from serotonin when we’re in love can help us get hooked on delusions about a relationship, even when we at first see bad signs. Like any good self-help book, it makes a lot of sense, and yet it is original and interesting.

My eager endorsement of the book may be self-incriminating; allow me to follow a genre approach to elucidate: Do you often spend time, energy or other resources avoiding conflict? Do you rationalize your own or others behavior? Following a confrontation do you have thoughts about how right or how much better you are? Are you often lonely or are you usually in relationships that are parasitic or filled with strife? In short, anyone who has strife in a relationship of any kind could theoretically benefit.

There are a couple strategies on how to deal immediately with conflict, even if you are in a position where you cannot respond, or are incapacitated to respond well. And there are more complex strategies for engaging in ongoing discussion with someone you have an intimate relationship with and are committed to. These are "fool proof if you follow all the steps/rules." Realistically, I can imagine very many alternate "out of bounds" responses and outcomes for every case study that went well.

To the author's credit, attempts one, two and three to getting it right are often described. Some of the couples' true stories are very moving. I can't help but think that they benefited particularly by having the author as their therapist, and that undertaking the strategy, however simple, as "amateurs" and without a neutral, and professional, mediator, could take a lot more tries. Still, better self-awareness, at least, can be achieved by reading Emotional Bullshit: The Hidden Plague that Is Threatening to Destroy Your Relationships—And How to Stop It.

Written by: Heather Irvine, March 29th 2009

The Amputee's Guide to Sex

admin — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:08:00 +0000

By Jillian Weise

Soft Skull Press

Posing as a handbook, The Amputee's Guide to Sex opens up a new world: not of cold lifeless prosthetics, but the raw, quivering beings that lie beyond them. Containing prose poems and free verse, the Guide is sharp and unapologetic, yet simultaneously contains yearning and heartbreak.

This book strips our obsession with Being Different/Otherness down to what it feels like from the other side; it's the difference between empathizing and fetishizing. Sometimes bitter, sometimes bold and always breathtakingly honest, Weise's words are more than just poems; they are a treatise on compassion and understanding. Weise is immediately engaging, sparring with the political, sexual, and societal realms, challenging our preconceived notions of disability and intimacy.

Throughout the book, Weise draws from medical texts and jargon, as well as history. Turning the sterile and clinical into the passionate, she deconstructs the relationship between patient and surgeon, and between lovers. Each poem is carefully constructed--a succinct work of detail and beauty. "Abscission," a work whose title refers to the natural or intentional shedding of a body part (think the leaves of a tree or plant), collides with the world of lovers and doctors: Your favorite post-coital pastime/is nicknaming my scars. The name for the railroad track/along my back-Engine.

Disabled or not, readers will find something to hold onto—whether it be flesh, prose or otherwise. The book offers up work that is unique, informative, and personal.

Written by: Jennifer Treuting, June 5th 2007