Don Kulick, Professor of Anthropology Director, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and Director, Program for Gender and Sexuality Studies, The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University It doesn't waste time telling us what it will do or what it has just done-it just does it." " What Do Gay Men Want? is compelling, timely, and provocative. Auden Collegiate Professor of the History and Theory of Sexuality, Professor of English, Professor of Women's Studies, Professor of Comparative Literature, and Adjunct Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. wonderfully clear and exciting argument for new ways in which we may understand gay subjectivities."ĭavid M. Myra Jehlen, Board of Governors Professor of English, Rutgers University, and author of Readings at the Edge of Literature "With Genet, David Halperin invokes a desire that seeks the limits of desire, and, warning against explaining it away through analyses of the individual psyche, proposes a poetical-philosophical-political exegesis. Paul Morrison, Professor of English and American Literature, Brandeis University, and author of The Explanation for Everything: Essays on Sexual Subjectivity This, Halperin's most recent work, will confirm his reputation even as it serves to renegotiate what is (or should be) thinkable under the rubric of 'queer studies.'" "This rich and provocative book is a fundamental intervention in (and reconceptualization of) the field of queer studies. Don Kulick, Professor of Anthropology Director, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and Director, Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University Anyone searching for creative and non-judgmental ways to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS among gay men-or interested in new modes of thinking about gay male subjectivity-should read this book. The reverberations of this original and bold contribution to queer studies will be felt for years to come.
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In a series of provocative and often moving readings of authors as obscure as Marcel Jouhandeau and as well known as Jean Genet, he shows how the long history of gay men's uses of "abjection" can yield alternative, non-moralistic models for thinking about gay male subjectivity. He argues that psychology, which is grounded in a highly prejudicial opposition between the normal and the pathological, between healthy and unhealthy behavior, masks a set of dubious moral assumptions about "good" and "bad" sex.Īgainst these insidious forms of sexual discipline, Halperin champions neglected traditions of queer thought, both literary and popular, that afford fascinating possibilities for addressing the vexed question of what gay men want. Unlike most writers on the topic of barebacking (condomless sex), David Halperin rejects psychology's claim to hold the keys to human subjectivity. Recent efforts to analyze gay men's motives for sexual risk-taking in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic have led to a revival of medical thinking about homosexuality and breathed new life into punitive clichés about gay men's alleged low self-esteem, lack of self-control, and various psychological "deficits." What Do Gay Men Want? offers a different language for describing gay men's inner lives.
Are homosexuals sick? Since gay liberation, the enlightened answer to that question has been a resounding no.