Joshua Javier Guzmán will present on "Dream Damaged: queer photography and the embrace of the non-identical"
This talk departs from the conclusion of Guzmán's book Dissatisfaction: Queer Latinidad and the Politics of Style, to argue for an alternative form of hope—one not drawn to a promised future but instead confronts the worst head-on within the here and now, like a powerless imagination expressed as a politics of codependency.
Dissatisfactions focuses on experimental Latino cultural productions in Los Angeles from 1968-1994 to show how style as a cultural form and sensibility become crucial for queer Latino politics. By examining cultural productions outside the sexual and racial mainstream, my project uncovers politically engaged styles of discontent with the Brown Power movement and Gay Liberation histories. Beginning with a cluster of historical markers in post-1968 L.A. (including the Vietnam War, the Chicano Student Walkouts, and Chicano militancy), the subjects of the study enact a critical dissatisfaction not only with the US nation-state, but also the activism emerging in response to systemic state violence, and in turn stylize their discontent. Thus, the book concludes with a gesture to the potential of photography to capture not only the disappointing sensuous world of the given but also the gap that separates it from the horizon of other possible worlds.
Dialogical to Dissatisfactions, this talk will bridge Guzmán's first monograph with his second book in progress, entitled Brown Exposures: Queer Photography and the Literary Aperture. With its continued focus on punk, queer, AIDS and visual culture in Reagan’s America, Brown Exposure seeks to also highlight the other side to the feeling of dissatisfaction, namely the terrible beauty expressed as the structure of visibility before the visible itself—its literary aperture—or the given seen as new.
Joshua Javier Guzmán is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Gender Studies at UCLA. He is the author of Dissatisfactions: Queer Latinidad and the Politics of Style (NYU Press 2024). His second monograph-in-progress, entitled Brown Exposures: Queer Photography and the Literary Aperture, is generously supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, the flagship journal of the field.