Ah, to have a “sadomasochistic nostalgia for oneself…” Is this the new plight of the gays? Thanks to Blake, we are all newly imprisoned. If you can now just give us the key to redemption, it would be highly appreciated.
Did you know that I'm talking to Ben this week about his new book on Dutch art? Do you have pick on all my podcast guests?!
Also, this is your new project, right, Blake? ("the opportunity, at last, for radicality, that is, for a rootedness and originality, for a thinking about the inheritance of gay culture from the past half-century and the possibilities for preserving and inventing forms of life out of it, that at last isn’t dependent on—assimilated to—extraneous discourses of a universalist left or a homophobic right,")
I don’t know what you think of Baudrillard, but if you can track down his essay “The Dark Continent of Childhood” I think it might be worth the time, insofar as his implication is that “the child” may be rebelling against its inevitable positioning as the next “universal” representative you outline re: emancipated women, gays, Jews, etc. The subtext of that essay seems to me obviously about school shootings (he may even reference an early, minor example in France).
tbh I don't really think of Baudrillard (I've just read 'The Gulf War Will not Take Place', Society of the Spectacle, Forget Foucault and some of the lolsy essays on Auschwitz, Sontag etc)... but I'll check it out. Foucault argued--I think quite presciently when you look at say 'trans kids' debates--that the 'child' would be the new figure around which governmentality would be organized; I don't know what dialogue on this he might have had with Baudrillard... There was a certain vogue around Columbine for like weird investment in such things as saying something important about society (I remember watching Gus van Zant's dreadful 'Elephant') but I have not really followed School Shooter Discourse...
Indeed, I was thinking of the trans discourse and related “groomer” hysteria and a sort of Zoomer-fixated (perhaps unseemly) aspect of Internet-centric criticism when I was reminded of that essay. I can also see how much of that feels quite tendentious (the Tiqqun “Young Girl” thing), or at least less sociologically grounded than what you’re actually talking about in this post. Still, the embrace of the neotenous (and not exclusively by reactionary e-girls wearing pinafores and Mary Janes at Dimes Square poetry readings, though I continue to see that spread to other spaces outside that exhausted scene, even more ostensibly “woke” readings in Brooklyn, haha) seems like a larger phenomenon. I have a first-year college student (this is a public school, half-immigrant, not zeitgeisty) writing about the rise of “teenage girl aesthetic” in her social media feeds, algorithmed at young women who were...just teenage girls like...yesterday?
Ah, to have a “sadomasochistic nostalgia for oneself…” Is this the new plight of the gays? Thanks to Blake, we are all newly imprisoned. If you can now just give us the key to redemption, it would be highly appreciated.
I will let you know when I find it!
Did you know that I'm talking to Ben this week about his new book on Dutch art? Do you have pick on all my podcast guests?!
Also, this is your new project, right, Blake? ("the opportunity, at last, for radicality, that is, for a rootedness and originality, for a thinking about the inheritance of gay culture from the past half-century and the possibilities for preserving and inventing forms of life out of it, that at last isn’t dependent on—assimilated to—extraneous discourses of a universalist left or a homophobic right,")
I did not know that lol (listening to The new episode rn!)--it's not picking on, it's thinking with!
And I'm currently agent-less so if the universe wants me to write that book I'd be up for it...
Send me the 200-word pitch and I'll see if my agent is interested.
I don’t know what you think of Baudrillard, but if you can track down his essay “The Dark Continent of Childhood” I think it might be worth the time, insofar as his implication is that “the child” may be rebelling against its inevitable positioning as the next “universal” representative you outline re: emancipated women, gays, Jews, etc. The subtext of that essay seems to me obviously about school shootings (he may even reference an early, minor example in France).
tbh I don't really think of Baudrillard (I've just read 'The Gulf War Will not Take Place', Society of the Spectacle, Forget Foucault and some of the lolsy essays on Auschwitz, Sontag etc)... but I'll check it out. Foucault argued--I think quite presciently when you look at say 'trans kids' debates--that the 'child' would be the new figure around which governmentality would be organized; I don't know what dialogue on this he might have had with Baudrillard... There was a certain vogue around Columbine for like weird investment in such things as saying something important about society (I remember watching Gus van Zant's dreadful 'Elephant') but I have not really followed School Shooter Discourse...
Indeed, I was thinking of the trans discourse and related “groomer” hysteria and a sort of Zoomer-fixated (perhaps unseemly) aspect of Internet-centric criticism when I was reminded of that essay. I can also see how much of that feels quite tendentious (the Tiqqun “Young Girl” thing), or at least less sociologically grounded than what you’re actually talking about in this post. Still, the embrace of the neotenous (and not exclusively by reactionary e-girls wearing pinafores and Mary Janes at Dimes Square poetry readings, though I continue to see that spread to other spaces outside that exhausted scene, even more ostensibly “woke” readings in Brooklyn, haha) seems like a larger phenomenon. I have a first-year college student (this is a public school, half-immigrant, not zeitgeisty) writing about the rise of “teenage girl aesthetic” in her social media feeds, algorithmed at young women who were...just teenage girls like...yesterday?