Hiram Pérez
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479818655
- eISBN:
- 9781479846757
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479818655.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
Rather than imagining the late Victorian invention of homosexuality as a moment of singular and absolute abjection, the introduction posits the homosexual as a modern agent of neocolonial expansion ...
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Rather than imagining the late Victorian invention of homosexuality as a moment of singular and absolute abjection, the introduction posits the homosexual as a modern agent of neocolonial expansion (the geographies of which are redefined by new visual and information technologies), instrumental both to modern nation-building and transnational flows of capital. A range of mobilities, transformed or generated by industrialization (i.e. class privilege, whiteness, transportation technology, mass media, tourism) and eventually post-industrial society (i.e. communications and information technologies), provide conditions for a cosmopolitan gay male subject. The introduction traces the foundations of gay modernity to gay cosmopolitanism, including the queer, proletarian cosmopolitanism of sailors, soldiers, and cowboys, interrogating how these three figures were deployed to sustain and expand U.S. empire. It is crucial to recover these unexpected routes of queer cosmopolitanism in order to appreciate the links between gay modernity and imperialism.Less
Rather than imagining the late Victorian invention of homosexuality as a moment of singular and absolute abjection, the introduction posits the homosexual as a modern agent of neocolonial expansion (the geographies of which are redefined by new visual and information technologies), instrumental both to modern nation-building and transnational flows of capital. A range of mobilities, transformed or generated by industrialization (i.e. class privilege, whiteness, transportation technology, mass media, tourism) and eventually post-industrial society (i.e. communications and information technologies), provide conditions for a cosmopolitan gay male subject. The introduction traces the foundations of gay modernity to gay cosmopolitanism, including the queer, proletarian cosmopolitanism of sailors, soldiers, and cowboys, interrogating how these three figures were deployed to sustain and expand U.S. empire. It is crucial to recover these unexpected routes of queer cosmopolitanism in order to appreciate the links between gay modernity and imperialism.
Hiram Perez
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479818655
- eISBN:
- 9781479846757
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479818655.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
A Taste for Brown Bodies asks what difference race makes in the emergence of gay modernity. The book examines how the romanticization of the “brown body” continues to shape modern gay sensibilities, ...
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A Taste for Brown Bodies asks what difference race makes in the emergence of gay modernity. The book examines how the romanticization of the “brown body” continues to shape modern gay sensibilities, tracing that brown body to the nostalgic imagination of gay cosmopolitanism. In so doing, the book looks in particular to the queer masculinities of three figures: the sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy, themselves proletariat cosmopolitans of sorts. All three of these figures have functioned, officially and unofficially, as cosmopolitan extensions of the US nation-state and as agents for the expansion of its borders and neocolonial zones of influence. The book considers not only how US imperialist expansion was realized but also how it was visualized for and through gay men. US empire not only makes possible certain articulations of gay modernity but also instrumentalizes them. The book argues that certain practices and subjectivities understood historically as forms of homosexuality are regulated and normalized in their service to US empire. By means of an analysis of literature, film, and photographs from the 19th to the 21st centuries—including Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” and photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison—the book proposes that modern gay male identity, often traced to late Victorian constructions of “invert” and “homosexual,” occupies not the periphery of the nation but rather a cosmopolitan position, instrumental to projects of war, colonialism, and neoliberalism.Less
A Taste for Brown Bodies asks what difference race makes in the emergence of gay modernity. The book examines how the romanticization of the “brown body” continues to shape modern gay sensibilities, tracing that brown body to the nostalgic imagination of gay cosmopolitanism. In so doing, the book looks in particular to the queer masculinities of three figures: the sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy, themselves proletariat cosmopolitans of sorts. All three of these figures have functioned, officially and unofficially, as cosmopolitan extensions of the US nation-state and as agents for the expansion of its borders and neocolonial zones of influence. The book considers not only how US imperialist expansion was realized but also how it was visualized for and through gay men. US empire not only makes possible certain articulations of gay modernity but also instrumentalizes them. The book argues that certain practices and subjectivities understood historically as forms of homosexuality are regulated and normalized in their service to US empire. By means of an analysis of literature, film, and photographs from the 19th to the 21st centuries—including Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” and photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison—the book proposes that modern gay male identity, often traced to late Victorian constructions of “invert” and “homosexual,” occupies not the periphery of the nation but rather a cosmopolitan position, instrumental to projects of war, colonialism, and neoliberalism.
Hiram Pérez
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479818655
- eISBN:
- 9781479846757
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479818655.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
Expanding on the notion of the primal “brown body” mediating gay modernity, this chapter argues that this brown body (frequently, though not exclusively, embodied as “Latino”) mediates gay male ...
More
Expanding on the notion of the primal “brown body” mediating gay modernity, this chapter argues that this brown body (frequently, though not exclusively, embodied as “Latino”) mediates gay male shame. Andy Warhol’s film, Screen Test #2, Douglas Crimp’s essay on that film, “Mario Montez, For Shame,” and the “Gay Shame” conference held at the University of Michigan in 2003, which opened with a showing of the Warhol film, provide the primary texts for analysis. Crimp (and “Gay Shame” by extension) deploys monolithic constructions of “Puerto Rican” and “Catholic” in order to project and universalize (the urbane, white gay man’s) shame onto Montez’s othered (or browned) body. The chapter argues that Montez, rather than merely providing the passive object of Warhol’s experiments in camera-technique and exposure, skillfully pirates the film’s authority in ways that remain illegible to Crimp’s construction of gay shame.Less
Expanding on the notion of the primal “brown body” mediating gay modernity, this chapter argues that this brown body (frequently, though not exclusively, embodied as “Latino”) mediates gay male shame. Andy Warhol’s film, Screen Test #2, Douglas Crimp’s essay on that film, “Mario Montez, For Shame,” and the “Gay Shame” conference held at the University of Michigan in 2003, which opened with a showing of the Warhol film, provide the primary texts for analysis. Crimp (and “Gay Shame” by extension) deploys monolithic constructions of “Puerto Rican” and “Catholic” in order to project and universalize (the urbane, white gay man’s) shame onto Montez’s othered (or browned) body. The chapter argues that Montez, rather than merely providing the passive object of Warhol’s experiments in camera-technique and exposure, skillfully pirates the film’s authority in ways that remain illegible to Crimp’s construction of gay shame.
