|
||||||||
Pleasureless: A Queer Symposium
by Phoenix AlexanderLauren Berlant, Juana María Rodríguez, Gabriel Rosenberg and Shaka McGlotten participated in Pleasureless: A Queer Symposium, on March 30th 2018. This day-long event brought together leading scholars of queer theory to discuss consent, sex, community and connection in the 21st-century. From animal/human pleasures to daily practices of radical self-care, our presenters led students and faculty in theorizing what sex, and pleasure, offer us in a political climate that often pathologizes difference. Berlant spoke on the interplay of jokes and sexual acts, and the theme of ambivalence: one developed by McGlotten in his discussion of the distinction between pleasures and attachments that are often transient, sometimes toxic. Rosenberg used case studies of bestiality laws to critique intellectual assumptions (and legal frameworks) of consent and agency, and Rodriguez presented on ‘enfleshed theorization of queer brownness’ centered on the now-closed, but still-vital, ‘Esta Noche’: a queer latinx ‘microcosm of dirt, adoration and desire’ that was recently reclaimed by activists (including Rodriguez herself) who staged a night of revelry in the now-gentrified space the bar used to occupy. Following the symposium, the presenters met with graduate students and faculty for a round-table to discuss work-life balance in the academy – particularly for those working in queer studies. Berlant posed the challenge of conceptualizing an ‘other’ to absorption that isn’t depletion, encouraging us to obsess over the intellectual questions that drive us without paying too high a cost. All the panelists advocated thinking of self-care not as passing gestures but as a way of life. Panel 1: Play, Puppies, Prognoses “The Peanut Butter Problem: On Pet Pleasure” |
||||||||
 | ||||||||
Find us on |
WGSS LGBTS |
|||||||
