tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post5801472403568417974..comments2024-02-08T05:04:18.484-08:00Comments on J'S THEATER: Cosas GeneralesJohn Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08073378940347627766noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-88687228757035254372008-01-07T20:33:00.000-08:002008-01-07T20:33:00.000-08:00No need to apologize for the length of your commen...No need to apologize for the length of your comments, Keguro; yours is hardly that long. You mention your work in "affect," which leads me to ask, how does this relate to psychological theories of personhood and affect, which encompasses what you're saying? (I know there's a lot of lit crit work in/on affect these days.) I also wonder about the normalization of certain kinds of acts and practices, like barebacking and raw sex, which are still somewhat officially frowned upon--by health authorities, prevention workers--but which have increasingly normalized in prevention discussions (around "risk"), and which have also been portrayed in porn, first in backlash form going back to the mid-1990s and later celebrated, by the late 1999s by people like Tony Valenzuela and others, so that they're now considered yet another "niche," in some cases standard, as opposed to being considered within the critical health and prevention discourses, some of them pretty alarmist, that were common in prior years of the AIDS pandemic.John Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08073378940347627766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-25593656190075966052008-01-04T19:13:00.000-08:002008-01-04T19:13:00.000-08:00You said that very beautifully, Keguro. I wanted ...You said that very beautifully, Keguro. I wanted to express a similar feeling but couldn't bring it down into words.<BR/><BR/>Kai in NYCAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11122973.post-23104994355503026072008-01-04T08:38:00.000-08:002008-01-04T08:38:00.000-08:00Strangely, or not, recent work in affect has start...Strangely, or not, recent work in affect has started to give me a language with which to talk about what I had felt only intuitively many years ago about barebacking and HIV: being marginal and abject is not simply a social and cultural position, but a deeply felt one; it is "in the air" one breathes. <BR/><BR/>I have often experienced the chilly difference that comes from knowing you're valued (or desired, and the distinction between the two is worth debating) at one moment, only to experience complete abjection the next: to leave the gay club only to be yelled at by a car of bashers. To be the only queer person in a class, amidst students who make it clear you do not matter. <BR/><BR/>These incidents compound over time. And, I must confess, I often find the rhetoric of "you must value yourself" tedious and unrealistic; humans are not closed systems. Our walls are nothing but a series of tiny, vulnerable openings.<BR/><BR/>I think there's a finer, though no less abstract, way of discussing "inevitability." Often, I think we are too scared to try. <BR/><BR/>Sorry for the overly-long comment. It's simply an opening I've needed for some time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com