The Estrangement Principle

In eight smart, provocative essays, writer and artist Goldberg (The Photographer) examines queer art—literary, visual, and performance-based—and questions the value of fraught, slippery labels such as queer that are variously deployed and interpreted. Goldberg shows the limits of labels, observing that calling art “queer” excludes certain art that shares quite a lot with queer art. They remind readers that identities, and communities—the multiplicities of art and humankind—resist being reduced to easy, well-bounded categories. Goldberg effectively queers readers’ perspective on consuming and producing cultural products, reminding them to recursively look at language, their contexts, and what their purposes may be when they include and exclude: “Labeling art and writing ‘queer’ affirms the power of those who are consistently silenced.” This book is a passport to the bold, complex world of queer art, literature, theory, politics, and community. [em](Sept.) [/em]