Hello, hello, hello as we enter week X (because, really, no one was counting when this started) of the Pandemic.
This update is late, as you know. As I adjust to a schedule in The Time of No Schedules, I think Wednesdays will work better than Tuesdays. Since this is already Friday (The New Wednesday, which was … Tuesday!), the next update will appear on April 29, and then regularly every Wednesday after that. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter where I pop up with some regularity, but the best way to make sure you’re updated on my work is to sign up for my weekly newsletter—please let me know you’d like to get that.
I’m going to spend the rest of the month finishing up with prior commitments, and then launch into writing the book and continue with work exclusive to this website. In the meantime, you can still expect to see regular work in my “Pandemic” series, and definitely a piece on the American Dirt controversy (itself a prelude to another essay on the same topic).
WHICH BRINGS ME TO AN UPDATE ON WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING
I published three inter-related pieces in the “Pandemic” series.
“Spawn,” about children and death and coughing.
“Breath,” about fear and cops and disappearing.
“Person,” about how we think of the aged during these times. This was by far the most difficult one to write.
And if you missed it, “Grit,” which launched the series, is here.
I forgot to mention, in my last update, that I made an appearance on Jaya Sundaresh’s blog. She interviewed me for a piece she’s writing on fanfiction, especially around Pete Buttigieg, and we talked for a bit about “the economy of fag haggery.” Jaya’s work is forthcoming, and you can also expect a bit from me on fag haggery, which I’ve addressed previously here.
DRAWING ON THE ARCHIVE
You might recall that I wrote this, “Riding the Hashtag: How Elites Embrace the Veneer of Radicalism” for Current Affairs, about Ziad Ahmed, who got into Stanford (and eventually went to Yale) after writing an admissions essay that consisted of nothing but the words “Black Lives Matter” over and over. Well, Ahmed is back in the news again, having perfected his particular and peculiar brand of faux-radicalism, this time waving his hands frantically at those who would dare to question the idea that we should all just vote for Biden, damn it! He even uses the word “fucking” just so you know he’s serious, man, totally serious.
I thought of writing a little sequel to my first piece but decided there’s not much to say about this except that he’s being his usual, cynical, manipulative self, that he’s clearly full of shit, and that he will probably be president of the United States some day.
Also from the archive: we’ve all been thinking a lot about connections and friends and friendships, so here are two of my older pieces on the subject:
“Friendship in the Time of Love,” my first exploration of the subject.
“Jason Momoa, Aquaman, and the Queer Art of Friendship” was my second (although, really, I talk about love and friendship a lot, throughout my work).
Speaking of Momoa, who still makes my heart race: a dear friend M. got me this and I cannot begin to describe how much I look forward to ah, colouring him in.
Here, for now, are a few of the topics I’ll be taking up (for more, see my list of categories).
Writing/ the State of Publishing
The publishing world, particularly on the left, is dominated by people who can afford to write for free because they’re independently wealthy or have partners/families to help them out. They’re not always the best in their fields, but they know the right people and turn into fashionable “public intellectuals.” Most “left” publishing outlets (including prestigious art magazines) recycle the same views (“Bernie is our last hope!” “Racism is evil!” “Neoliberalism: The Scourge of our Times!”) in some form or another.
The result is a moribund left publishing industry which only looks exciting during election years and is, at best a platform for giant circle jerks (there are, of course exceptions, including Current Affairs, The Intercept, TruthOut, Electronic Intifada and In These Times), and is coast-centric to a fault. Reading the average “left” publication is about gaining another tool for social mobility so that we might parrot the hippest hot take; it has nothing to do with actually understanding the world. In the coming months, I’m going to be asking very hard questions about the fraught and deeply troubling history of an extremely exploitative left publishing industry with that excellent dictate “Follow the money” in mind. The left publishing world has for too long been allowed to coast along without being questioned about the sharp inequalities it perpetuates while hypocritically yammering on about wanting a “socialist” world. Writing is a profession, not a hobby or a calling, and it’s time to treat it as such. I’ve written about some of the issues here.
Academia
I write about academia as much as I do because I genuinely believe that it can be a place to foster real intellectual growth, work, research, and a healthy public discourse. I’m militantly opposed to the anti-intellectual notion, propounded by many on the left (who, conveniently, already have their degrees) that higher education doesn’t matter and the university system should be destroyed. While not everyone needs to get a college degree, we need to make sure that everyone has the option to do so. And, more importantly, we need to think about ways in which intellectual inquiry and rigorous conversations and thinking permeate all parts of our lives. The point should not be to end academe but to consider how to make what it can offer available to everyone. This takes you to more of my work on the subject.
Gender/Sexuality/Race
Now that gay marriage has been won and we’re all riding this wave of Feminist Freedom initiated by #MeToo, we’re all free to imagine ourselves sexually liberated and on the cusp of some vast gender revolution. But in fact, as many of us have pointed out for a while, #MeToo has been a corrupt and ineffectual movement from the start, designed to do little more than advance the careers of celebrities and enable the kind of “feminism” that we see in the likes of Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren (who was happy to skewer Bloomberg for his record of sexual harassment but is now happily willing to be Joe Biden’s running mate). And as I’ve consistently pointed out over the years, alongside several brilliant people, the mainstream gay movement is racist, elitist, and steeped in misogyny. The left in particular has been awful on race: it insists that race is a construct (which it is) but then also insists that race should simply not matter, forgetting that race also exists as a lived material reality for millions who are perfectly cognisant, in many different ways that, yes, difference is socially constructed but that they bear the many burdens of the sharp inequalities it brings forth.
If the left is to sustain any kind of future, it has to confront its failure to understand how embodiment is a part of, not outside, a radical alternative future. I’ve written an entire Manifesto and more about this; expect much more from me in the coming months and years. You can see more of what I’ve written on the subject here.
I know that people are going to read this and say that I’m only pointing to problems, to which I’ll respond that most of us haven’t really identified these issues as problems in the first place. I write more about this whining about “no solutions” here. To get to unravelling the issues I take up, I’ll be engaging a variety of material, including film and television, social media, left publications, and more: I’m promiscuous with regard to what engages my attention.
That’s it for now. Please look around this brand-new website, read some of my representative work, check out my “About” page, and shoot me an email if you have any questions. And if you’re able, please support me any way you can!