White d00ds Posing as Queer WOC—or, postmillennial hipness strikes again

In this post, I want to talk about several recent phenomena that I think are, if not best, at least usefully interpreted through the lens of my concept “postmillennial (black) hipness”. These phenomena include the “Gay Girl in Damascus” fiasco,…

Beyonce confirms my read of “Run the World (Girls)” is right

In a recent interview, summarized here at Bust, Beyonce was asked if girls really did run the world. She had a fairly long response, but the kicker is: Sometimes there are certain things that we have to work harder for,…

London’s Burning: Delete Yoursef, You Got No Chance to Win

As regular readers of the blog know, I’ve been working on several projects related to the role of music in the queer futurity/relationality debates. I’ve been thinking specifically about the use of punk and the gestures toward acid house. This…

Thoughts on philoSOPHIA 11 #2: Race, Technology, and the Body

Alia Al-Saji’s keynote was, as usual, all-around fabulous. One aspect of it particularly stood out to me, because it responded to this open question that I’ve been carrying around with me this semester. The question is about Falguni Sheth’s Towards…

Thoughts on philoSOPHIA 2011: #1, Music and Affect

Cynthia Willett’s paper continually drew relationships between the affective and the musical. Her paper was primarily on affect, “affective attunement,” and cross-sensory perception/communication. However, she continually used musical language (e.g., tones and rhythms, attunement, etc.) to describe the phenomena she…

Thoughts on philoSOPHIA 2011: Intro

philoSOPHIA is always one of my favorite conferences. It’s full of amazing people doing amazing work, and it’s small enough to have productive, meaningful exchanges. In order to continue some of these exchanges, and to hopefully bring in some new…

Girls do run the world, but patriarchy keeps that fact quietly bracketed: Listening to Beyonce’s “Run the World (Girls)”

Feminist bloggers all over the political and aesthetic spectrum have been criticizing Beyonce’s “Run The World (Girls)” for proffering post-feminist falsehoods, for objectifying/sexualizing women in the video, and for limiting women’s “accomplishments” to traditional roles (like behind every “great man”)….

Introducing Stardotblog, my new collaboration

I thought readers of this blog might be interested in my work over on Stardotblog, the studio blog of new media artist christian.ryan. You can see on that blog that I’ll be collaborating with christian on writing about and theorizing…

What is “negative” about political negativity?: On Halberstam, Joy Division, and Grace Jones (London’s Burning #3)

This post follows up on the previous one, which discussed Halberstam’s concept of political negativity. This bluring—or “ambiguity,” if you will—of subject/object position is even more evident in Grace Jone’s cover of “She’s Lost Control.” In my view, it is…

What is “negative” about political negativity?: On Halberstam, Joy Division, and Grace Jones (London’s Burning #3)

So, I’m working on several projects related to the use of music in contemporary queer theory. You all know I’ve been thinking about the role of punk in the futurity/relationality debates, and I’ve written before on the Halberstam/Edelman exhange on…