Ramzi Fawaz - Queer Forms

A DDITIONAL P RAISE FOR Queer Forms

Parting ways with queer theorys preference for the ephemeral, Queer Formsfeels the touch and re-touch of shapeshifting forms as it sets queer studies in new and dynamic relation to its objects in the world. In one of his signal claims, Fawaz uses the materiality of form to rethink the pervasive and privileged association of queerness with formlessness and fluidity. Thus, he argues that feminist and queer ideas become meaningful as they take material shape within the realm of popular cultural production, where they change audiences in ways that neither a pedantic politics nor a moralizing theory can.

Matt Brim, author of Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University

An inspirational history of queer and feminist cultural politics forged in the 1970s and extending to the 1990s. Ramzi Fawaz brilliantly maps the forms of relationality that feminist, lesbian, and gay communities invented to visu alize themselves and their futures. In an argument that is both crystalline and capacious, he has discerned patterns across a wide range of popular cultural texts, objects, and images, and he demonstrates how radical change has beenand can beimagined and enacted. Queer Formsis generously both history and manifesto. It calls on us to ask with each other how we want to see our future take shape.

David J. Getsy, author of Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender

Fawaz serves up a cornucopia of critical delights: fresh new readings of Tales of the Cityand Angels in America, of the films The Boys in the Band, Zardoz, Thelma & Louise,and Moonlight, as well as of the art of Joe Brainard and David Wojnarowicz. The book floods us with vivid cultural works richly rendered in their historical contexts and formal experimentation, and breathes life into sclerotic, forgotten genealogies. Indeed, the flood that leaves fertile soil in its wake is the method of Queer Formswith so much to think with and through, we cant help reaching the conclusion Fawaz argues for: that messy multiplicity and raucously productive pluralism were foundational to an array of late-twentieth-century left politics we often dismiss as limited and myopic, including second-wave feminism. The implications are instructive for unknotting our stymied political present.

Darieck Scott, author of Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics

Frontis: Edie Fake, Orgy, in Gaylord Phoenix#6 (2012)

Queer Forms

Ramzi Fawaz

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

www .nyupress .org

2022 by New York University

All rights reserved

References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fawaz, Ramzi, author.

Title: Queer forms / Ramzi Fawaz.

Description: New York : New York University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021057757 | ISBN 9781479829828 (hardback) | ISBN 9781479820733 (paperback) | ISBN 9781479816903 (ebook) | ISBN 9781479893782 (ebook other)

Subjects: LCSH : Sexual minorities in mass media. | Sexual minorities in popular culture.