Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics

Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics
by Douglas Crimp

Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics
List Price: $20.95
Our Price: $9.70
You Save: $11.25 (54%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $7.43 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Douglas Crimp
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-04-01
ISBN: 0262532646
Number of pages: 330
Publisher: The MIT Press

Book Reviews of Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics

Book Review: A Necessary Antedote to Prevailing Gay Views
Summary: 4 Stars

Douglas Crimp's collection of essays, many of which were written a decade ago, still have relevance today. They provide a necessary antidote to the views of many gay commentators who claim to speak for gays and lesbians in a voice of assimulation and accomodation. Crimp deconstructs their arguments to reveal their ambivalence (at best) and their homophobia (at worst).

Crimp's essays are uneven in that for those uninitiated to the jargon of queer theory, such as myself, their meaning are not readily apparent. However, Crimp is at his best when he sets aside the language of queer theory and shares his astute observations. I also assume that Crimp views gay identity as a social construct as opposed to an immutable trait in that Crimp heavyily relies upon the post-modern theories of Michel Foucault. As I believe otherwise, I am sure that this too contributed to my shortcomings in understanding Crimp's views.

The reality of AIDS remains central to how gay men view ourselves and the world at large, even though we would like to believe otherwise. Crimp's discussion of the moralism (i.e., judgment that tends toward self-loathing) that has resulted from our collective, unresolved grief (or melancholia) because of AIDS is revealing, albeit not entirely convincing. The old assimulation vs. liberation dichotomy pre-existed AIDS. AIDS may have drastically moved the debate toward assimulation but I do not think that unresolved grief diminished liberation. If by liberation one means the knowledge of self and others resulting from our collective sexual experiences (or the political prerequisite of having the means and space to engage in this process) tragically it is the deaths from AIDS itself that hindered liberation. The grief arose therefrom, and remains today. Assimulation, i.e., the accomodation of our lives to the prevailing market-driven economy and the pull of tradition, was well under way before AIDS. Although I may not agree with Crimp's theory, I applaud Crimp for urging us from surrendering our sexual selves (or the process of becoming our sexual selves)by adopting a worldview that is foreign to our experiences.

In his final essay Crimp bemoans the fact that very few queer theorists are able to share their liberatist views through the public media. However, Crimp concludes by amptly demonstrates that queer theory/liberation does not have to be arcane through his op-ed piece explaining why now more than ever continued, frank, and non-judgmental safe sex education is necessary to stem the spread of AIDS. (Unfortunately, the New York Times declined to publish it).

I hope that in the future the "mainsteam" media will allow liberationists to voice their views. However, in view of Crimp's observations about the mainstrem media's inabilty to fathom the gay experiece, I am not very optimistic.

Summary of Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics

Winner in the 2003 AAUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Competition in the Trade Illustrated category.

In Melancholia and Moralism, Douglas Crimp confronts the conservative gay politics that replaced the radical AIDS activism of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He shows that the cumulative losses from AIDS, including the waning of militant response, have resulted in melancholia as Freud defined it: gay men's dangerous identification with the moralistic repudiation of homosexuality by the wider society.

With the 1993 march on Washington for lesbian and gay rights, it became clear that AIDS no longer determined the agenda of gay politics; it had been displaced by traditional rights issues such as gay marriage and the right to serve in the military. Journalist Andrew Sullivan, notorious for pronouncing the AIDS epidemic over, even claimed that once those few rights had been won, the gay rights movement would no longer have a reason to exist.

Crimp challenges such complacency, arguing that not only is the AIDS epidemic far from over, but that its determining role in queer politics has never been greater. AIDS, he demonstrates, is the repressed, unconscious force that drives the destructive moralism of the new, anti-liberation gay politics expounded by such mainstream gay writers as Larry Kramer, Gabriel Rotello, and Michelangelo Signorile, as well as Sullivan. Crimp examines various cultural phenomena, including Randy Shilts's bestseller And the Band Played On, the Hollywood films "Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia," and Magic Johnson's HIV infection and retirement from the Los Angeles Lakers. He also analyzes Robert Mapplethorpe's and Nicholas Nixon's photography, John Greyson's AIDS musical "Zero Patience," Gregg Bordowitz's video "Fast Trip, Long Drop," the Names Project Quilt, and the annual "Day without Art."

History Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in History Books
Men of WW II: Fighting Men at Ease ImageMen of WW II: Fighting Men at Ease
by Evan Bachner
Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; Published: 2007-04-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.00
Price in other shops: $35.00
Transgender Warriors : Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman ImageTransgender Warriors : Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman
by Leslie Feinberg
Beacon Press; Published: 1997-06-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.00
Price in other shops: $24.95
The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal ImageThe Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal
by Barry Werth
Anchor; Published: 2002-03-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops: $14.95
Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present ImageOut of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present
by Neil Miller
Advocate Books; Published: 2005-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.69
Price in other shops: $18.95
Homosexuality and Civilization ImageHomosexuality and Civilization
by Louis Crompton
Belknap Press; Published: 2006-10-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.80
Price in other shops: $19.95
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (Between Men--Between Women) ImageOdd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (Between Men--Between Women)
by Lillian Faderman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1992-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.91
Price in other shops: $18.00
Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century ImageChristianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century
by John Boswell
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 2005-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.51
Price in other shops: $23.00
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 ImageGay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940
by George Chauncey
Basic Books; Published: 1995-05-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.79
Price in other shops: $22.00
Man to Man: A History of Gay Photography (Male Photography) ImageMan to Man: A History of Gay Photography (Male Photography)
by Pierre Borhan
Vendome Press; Published: 2007-10-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $45.49
Price in other shops: $85.00
Exiled in Paris: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, and Others on the Left Bank ImageExiled in Paris: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, and Others on the Left Bank
by James Campbell
University of California Press; Published: 2003-02-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.85
Price in other shops: $21.95
Similar Books and other products
Relational Aesthetics ImageRelational Aesthetics
by Nicolas Bourriaud
Les Presse Du Reel,Franc; Published: 1998-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.00
Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration ImageClose to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration
by David Wojnarowicz
Vintage; Published: 1991-05-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.82
Price in other shops: $14.95
Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence ImagePrecarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence
by Judith Butler
Verso; Published: 2006-08-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.14
Price in other shops: $18.00
An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Series Q) ImageAn Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Series Q)
by Ann Cvetkovich
Duke University Press; Published: 2003-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.21
Price in other shops: $23.95
Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (Medicine and Society , No 7) ImageImpure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (Medicine and Society , No 7)
by Steven Epstein
University of California Press; Published: 1996-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $23.70
Price in other shops: $24.95
Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Cultural Studies of the Americas, V. 2) ImageDisidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Cultural Studies of the Americas, V. 2)
by Jose Esteban Munoz, Munoz Jose
University of Minnesota Press; Published: 1999-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.00
Price in other shops: $20.00
AIDS Demo Graphics ImageAIDS Demo Graphics
by Douglas Crimp
Bay Press (WA); Published: 1990-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $48.71
Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality ImageBeyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality
by Patrick Moore
Beacon Press; Published: 2004-01-22; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.49
Price in other shops: $25.00
How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS (Series Q) ImageHow to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS (Series Q)
by Paula A. Treichler
Duke University Press; Published: 1999-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $24.00
Price in other shops: $24.95
The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986-2003 (Writing Art) ImageThe AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986-2003 (Writing Art)
by Gregg Bordowitz
The MIT Press; Published: 2006-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.50
Price in other shops: $19.95
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories