{"id":1994,"date":"2016-02-04T16:33:56","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T16:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/?p=1994"},"modified":"2016-02-05T18:44:59","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T18:44:59","slug":"the-consummate-cruise-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/sexualities\/the-consummate-cruise-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of the Consummate Cruise and the Essential Risk of the Common (1\/2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gay<\/a><\/p>\n

Part I – Ethics of Pleasure<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>In conceiving of the ethics and erotics of queer pornographic life, we need to rid ourselves of the notions and structures of self-other, subject-object, self-alterity. For the spacing, exposition and sense of existence is non-dichotomous because all that exists does so, not over and against something else that lies outside or beyond existence, but rather always and only on this side, within the finitude of existence and the world\u2014which is also to say, at existence\u2019s and the world\u2019s infinite opening.<\/p>\n

Such a conception of ethics and erotics also marks a strict opposition to a number of psychoanalytic conceptions of the relation between self and world, in which a securitizing of the self is the primary developmental goal. That is, the process by which the self seeks to defend itself against its own phantasmatic images and projections of the world as the source of that same self\u2019s ruination. As Leo Bersani has argued, this appropriative self-mastery and inevitably aggressive self-aggrandizement effectively forfeits any possible ethics. Indeed, Bersani has long been committed to thoroughly re-thinking the centricity of the self, by introducing such concepts as: self-shattering<\/em>, impersonal narcissism<\/em>, and the inaccurate replication<\/em> of the self.<\/p>\n

In his recent essay, \u201cErotic Ruination: Embracing the \u2018Savage Spirituality\u2019 of Barebacking,\u201d Kent Brintnall offers an extended critique of Bersani\u2019s, as well as Tim Dean\u2019s work on the sexual practice and subcultures of barebacking. Arguing for the political, ethical and spiritual value of self-sacrifice that he perceives in barebacking, Brintnall criticizes Dean and Bersani for what he sees as their different yet equal retention\u2014indeed protection and securitization\u2014of the categories of subject and of the self in their discussions of the practice of barebacking. As Brintnall writes: \u201cdespite his celebration of bug chasers\u2019 openness to alterity and their critique of the ideology of safety, Dean has built a wall along the self\u2019s border, without explicitly acknowledging he has done so, to keep certain risks from migrating too far into the self\u2019s territory\u201d (Brintnall, 62). Indeed Brintnall\u2019s indictment is so extensive that at another point he goes so far as to claim that \u201ccontrary to Dean\u2019s and Bersani\u2019s insistence, this is not, in the final analysis, a new vision of relationality but only a slightly modified one, fully consistent with the racist, sexist, classist, and nationalist anxieties about dangerous others that comprise our contemporary cultural order\u201d (Brintnall, 52).<\/p>\n

These words are damning, but beyond their hyperbole they are also entirely inaccurate. Within the context and limits of this short article, I cannot pursue a detailed analysis of Dean\u2019s and Bersani\u2019s respective works, nor can I delineate the differences between their respective arguments on barebacking, sexual risk and cruising. However it should be apparent to anyone who has read either of these theorists, that their work is not dedicated to preserving the sanctity of the self, nor committed to grounding the ethical and political in a logic of sacrifice, and of self-sacrifice in particular. For instance, in his discussion of \u201ccruising as a way of life,\u201d Dean writes that, \u201cOpenness to contact with the other gives rise to an ethics not of self-sacrifice but of pleasure\u201d (Dean, Unlimited Intimacy<\/em>, 205).<\/p>\n

After reading Brintnall\u2019s essay, I still cannot see how self-sacrifice is not in fact a sanctifying and heroicizing embrace of the self, and of the self\u2019s valorization\u2014its self-valorization\u2014via its own self-sacrifice. Brintnall\u2019s insistence on an ethics of willful sacrifice is profoundly Hegelian, and as such, ironically preserves or conserves the subject that he believes is being divested via the subject\u2019s own sacrificial self-divestment. For as Partrick French makes clear in his reading of Hegel\u2019s Phenomenology<\/em>, \u201cThe subject is both a subject of sacrifice in the sense that it is the subject\u2019s sacrifice that is at stake here, and it is a question of seeing the subject as sacrifice<\/em>, to the extent that the subject is produced by and through sacrifice\u2026Sacrifice attains its full resolution in the auto-suppression of the subject\u2026the subject of<\/em> and as<\/em> sacrifice\u201d (French, 72, emphasis in original).<\/p>\n

In my mind, construing self-sacrifice as an ultimate ethical virtue is similar to what Foucault referred to as \u201cunlimited asceticism leading to suicide\u201d (Foucault, 195). Following Foucault, self-sacrifice would be \u201ca kind of vertigo or enchantment\u201d attracted by an absolutism of negation. \u201cA freeing oneself from matter\u201d as Foucault put it, including freeing oneself from oneself, but within Brintnall\u2019s ethical schema, only as a means to free\u2014and thus save\u2014the other from oneself.<\/p>\n

It is not that Brintnall is unaware of Bersani\u2019s own engagement with Foucault\u2019s late work on ascesis<\/em>, but rather it is that he lambasts both Bersani and Dean for ultimately privileging the preservation and safety of self by drawing distinctions between psychical<\/em> and conceptual danger and risk on the one hand, and physical<\/em> danger and risk on the other. In other words, Bersani and Dean are theorizing without actually advocating for barebacking.<\/p>\n

Yet as Foucault made clear, ascesis<\/em>, as the exercise of the self on the self, is not about the self\u2019s sanctification nor its negation\u2014let alone its sanctification through its self-negation. The challenges imposed on the self by the self in ascesis<\/em> may even lead to self-endangerment. Still I believe that there is a profound difference between self-endangerment (which retains the force of risk), and self-sacrifice (which transforms that force into a definitive annihilated form).<\/p>\n

Like the work of Dean and Bersani, my work in queer theory over the past twenty years has been committed to an ethos of pleasure and aesthetics of existence, including in the forms and practices of impersonal intimacy such as cruising and anonymous and promiscuous sex. Yet I have done so in ways\u2014and here somewhat distinct from Dean and Bersani\u2014that affects a shift from the language of self\/alterity<\/em> to one of singularity<\/em>. Methodologically speaking, I would argue that such differences indicate different philosophical genealogies in queer theory, one line traceable back to Freud, while another to Heidegger\u2014what we might distinguish as psycho- or existential analytics. In raising this issue of genealogy, we might also ask who in queer theory reads Heidegger as well as the French post-Heideggereans (Blanchot, Bataille, Derrida, Nancy)? In other words: for whom in queer theory is the starting point of analysis an ontological and not a sociological question? There are those in contemporary philosophy and critical theory, such as Jean-Luc Nancy and William Haver who in their various ways have articulated the a priori inextricability of the finitude of singularity as always multiple and shared, rather than structuring their thinking of sociality in terms of the identity of subjectivity as that which demands to be recognized by others (e.g. Judith Butler).<\/p>\n

In Part II of this essay, following further discussion of the ethics of pleasure as opposed to the problematic of self-sacrifice, I turn to Haver\u2019s recent work on the sense of the common and extrapolate from it a philosophy of cruising as aesthetic intuition of the common.<\/p>\n

Jump to Part II here:\u00a0https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/sexualities\/the-consummate-cruise-2\/<\/p>\n

Featured<\/strong> Image<\/strong> Source<\/strong>:\u00a0http:\/\/outwritenewsmag.org\/2014\/11\/four-ucla-bathrooms-that-are-actually-gay-cruising-spots\/<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bersani, Leo. Is the Rectum a Grave?<\/span> University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 2009.<\/p>\n

Brintnall, Kent. \u201cErotic Ruination: Embracing the \u2018Savage Spirituality\u2019 of Barebacking,\u201d in Negative Ecstasies: George Bataille and the Study of Religion<\/span>. Edited by Jeremy Biles and Kent Brintnall, Fordham UP. New York, 2015.<\/p>\n

Dean, Tim. Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking<\/span>. University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 2009.<\/p>\n

French, Patrick. After Bataille: Sacrifice, Exposure, Community<\/span>. Legenda. 2007.<\/p>\n

Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Coll\u00e8ge de France, 1977-1978<\/span>. Picador. New York, 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part I – Ethics of Pleasure \u00a0In conceiving of the ethics and erotics of queer pornographic life, we need to rid ourselves of the notions and structures of self-other, subject-object, self-alterity. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":1996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sexualities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1994"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2022,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1994\/revisions\/2022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openhumanitiespress.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}