Queer Theory & Futurism

[alice wellintown]

On this day in 1909 the Italian poet F. T. Marinetti published his
"The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism" in the Paris newspaper, Le
Figaro. This is regarded as the birth of the Futurist movement, which
in radical or watered-down ways had a significant influence on modern
art and literature, and on modern communications theorists such as
Marshall McLuhan. The Futurist movement celebrated the techno-discord
it saw on the horizon -- the rush of cars, the collapse of community,
the shock of new and now. Although it derided Romantic nostalgia,
Marinetti's preamble to the Manifesto could get lyrical:

http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=2/20/2010

Book Review - No Future: Queer Theory And The Death Drive (Queer
Theory/Cultural Studies)

In this searing polemic, Lee Edelman outlines a radically
uncompromising new ethics of queer theory. His main target is the
all-pervasive figure of the child, which he reads as the linchpin of
our universal politics of "reproductive futurism." Edelman argues that
the child, understood as innocence in need of protection, represents
the possibility of the future against which the queer is positioned as
the embodiment of a relentlessly narcissistic, antisocial, and
future-negating drive. He boldly insists that the efficacy of
queerness lies in its very willingness to embrace this refusal of the
social and political order. In No Future, Edelman urges queers to
abandon the stance of accommodation and accede to their status as
figures for the force of a negativity that he links with irony,
jouissance, and, ultimately, the death drive itself.

Closely engaging with literary texts, Edelman makes a compelling case
for imagining Scrooge without Tiny Tim and Silas Marner without little
Eppie. Looking to Alfred Hitchcock’s films, he embraces two of the
director’s most notorious creations: the sadistic Leonard of North by
Northwest, who steps on the hand that holds the couple precariously
above the abyss, and the terrifying title figures of The Birds, with
their predilection for children. Edelman enlarges the reach of
contemporary psychoanalytic theory as he brings it to bear not only on
works of literature and film but also on such current political
flashpoints as gay marriage and gay parenting. Throwing down the
theoretical gauntlet, No Future reimagines queerness with a passion
certain to spark an equally impassioned debate among its readers.

http://up_yours.blogspot.com/2002_09_15_up_yours_archive.html