Estrangement Principle

by Ariel Goldberg

The Estrangement Principle argues for a wider range of possible associations with art made by queer people by unraveling the difficulties of the “queer art” label. Goldberg invokes the lives and works of artists Renee Gladman, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Jack Waters & Peter Cramer, and others to bring into focus the problematics of categorization in art and literary histories. This book-length essay mixes cultural criticism, close readings, and personal anecdotes, all the while developing a deftly wrought tension between a polemical voice and one of ambivalence. The Estrangement Principle is an exercise in contradiction with the ultimate goal of resisting the practice of movement naming.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, Art, LGBT

296 pages, Paperback

First published December 6, 2016

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the cultural and aesthetic archive that comes alive in this book, which spans a range of mostly very recent contemporary queer art and literature. I'm not that exercised by the problem of the word "queer" (but of course the word describes people like me and work like mine pretty readily without much complication); that said, I was impressed by how Goldberg uses the question in its various iterations to organize a book so devoted to queer culture and community. Loved the part about Goldberg performing as a camp Kay Ryan in particular, LOL and the reading of Renee Gladman is terrific too.

[Katy]

"Vaid then reflects on her own coming of age in the 70s. She notes that 'queer identity' formation is distinct from that of 'ethnic minorities, which transmit their cultural heritage through family, ritual, and tradition,' because 'queer identity is learned principally through the meditation of commercial enterprises.' Vaid then lists going to a bar, a bookstore, and a film festival as the first experiences of being surrounded by other lesbians." (117)

Wilde Boys Salon: identity politics feel like they should always be lefty, but in the case of these gay white men, it was anything but. Such a fucking NYC example of something becoming so elitist and exclusionary and gatekeeper-y that really ought not to be. (199).

I didn't want to mark this book read until I finished reading the footnotes. Great footnotes. I enjoyed the book thought alot of it was really academic. I had to let go of the idea that I needed to have read everything mentioned in the book in order to understand Goldberg's critiques/analyses of said things. (Of course I'm sure it would've helped.) It can be tiresome to read books about other books if you haven't read the other books, but the prose was engaging enough that it was more intriguing than tiring.

[Roz Ito · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book reminded me of a friend I once had, who I'll call Victor. He was just a few years older than me and an undergrad at the same university I was attending. What impressed me most about Victor was how he was able to move so seamlessly & effortlessly between the worlds of public gay sex and academia. Like his hero Michel Foucault, he could hook up anonymously with strangers in a San Francisco bathhouse and then go home to read philosophy for the rest of the night. Except that home in Victor’s case was a small bedroom in the Richmond District unit that he shared with his parents, conservative immigrants from Hong Kong who were unaware (or deliberately unseeing) of his queerness. Victor introduced me to the ideas of Foucalt and the films of Michelangelo Antonioni and expanded my understanding of Judith Butler. We talked about art and critical theory and being queer, living the queer life. I felt incredibly at home in our conversations, I have always felt most at home when experiencing art or reading or losing myself in ideas, and I have always felt most comfortably at home when talking about these things with other people who also feel most at home in this strange, exhilarating, seemingly limitless space. Some of these people identify as queer in the LGBTQI sense, others do not, but I think they all share this queer way of thinking & living, which is this way of feeling most of home when inhabiting both the physical world and the metaphysical world of art & ideas at the same time.

In Victor’s case, our conversations took on an extra layer of significance because they marked an urgent & personally significant intersection between our shared queer identity and queer ways of thinking. Through theory, art, and literature, we were at once searching for a reflection of our ways of thinking, an enactment of our inner beings, an interpretation of our queer activities in the physical world, and clues on how to integrate these theoretical conceptions of ourselves into more coherent presentations of ourselves in physical, social reality. These problems came with great promise and some real risks. The last time I saw Victor, he was rehabilitating in an in-patient mental health clinic north of Oakland. A failed romance had triggered an escalation of his panic attacks which led to a nervous breakdown rooted, I believe, in the overwhelming pressure of having to hold together so many disparate and mutually contradictory strands of his life.

This has all just been a long preamble on my way to say that as a queer person who also has a queer way of thinking & living, I often feel as if I am constructing my life on layers upon layers of provisional scaffolding and all this scaffolding leaves me at times in need of a guide to help navigate the overwhelming noise & stuff of existence. Ariel Goldberg is one such guide.

In “The Estrangement Principle,” Goldberg poses the impossible question “what is queer art,” a query bound to elicit all kinds of objections and argumentation, as well as cheers from various quarters. Personally I don’t care whether Goldberg ever settles on a conclusive answer because the pleasure is all in the multifarious ways that they ask the question; the act of searching becomes itself the answer, the journey is the real destination.

I’m tempted to subtitle this book “The Goldberg Variations,” drawing a too-obvious parallel between Ariel Goldberg’s restlessly brilliant perambulations around a single central theme and Bach’s methodically inventive composition of the same title, written to assuage an insomniac. However, Goldberg is not a classical musician but a photographer by vocation and therefore unbound by rigorous rules of temporality. It’s their calling instead to capture moments, lots & lots of moments, to zoom in up close on some, pan out on others, to frame & reframe them, shuffle them out of chronological order, place them next to one another in different arrangements, and stand back and look. The discourse that unfolds reads like experiential journalism, cultural criticism, and personal memoir all rolled up together in a remarkable package of articulate, timely, and hyperactively entertaining ideas.

Here’s just one example of how Goldberg’s rapid-fire, camera-shutter eye click, click, clicks through every gossipy and layered meta-moment of a contemporary cultural event:

“A fictional Fleetwood Mac cover band, The Queens Pucks, set the mood. They called May Lion to the stage but she replied, ‘I’m not reading until my girlfriend is here.’ This unscripted resistance to reading my poem to an extremely small audience elicited a genuinely puzzled look from Lena Moy-Borgen (Stevie Nicks). She insisted. May then got up to read with a vengeance about residing at the margins of the performance as a metasatire of the marginalized lesbian poet. Marya Warshaw, the director of this non-profit, sat in the front row with her partner Jane. Even though they beamed at my lesbian satire, I became so nervous watching them watch me. What if they were offended? This fear of offending is the result of living in a time of deadening professionalism.” (189)

“May Lion” is Goldberg’s performance persona, a hilarious, deliberately disrespectful parody of former Poet Laureate Kay Ryan and the “traces of lesbian life” that Goldberg finds explicitly absent from Ryan’s poetry and career. Throughout the book, Goldberg portrays themself as a charming, irreverent, and comically self-deprecating young upstart artist crashing the gates of the queer establishment (all-male gay coteries are a particular target), an oedipal butch prankster approaching queer icons like Fran Lebowitz and Sarah Schulman with equal parts awe and provocation.

In fact, one could view "The Estrangement Principle" as a kind of self-initiated dissertation project apparently conducted when Goldberg was around 30 years old, a stand-in doctoral degree earned on the street. It will be interesting to follow Goldberg's career to see if, when, and how they will be able to shift their authorial persona (a la Jonathan Safran Foer) from earnest youthful trickster to the next age-congruent mode, whatever that may be.

In any case, you don’t have to agree with everything Goldberg says or does to appreciate their first-class mind and unstoppable work ethic (it seems they have somehow managed to read, view, attend, and participate in practically every queer-themed artistic and literary production in existence since 2010, on both the west and east coasts of the U.S.), as well as their singular commitment to tracing this theme through all its aesthetic and cultural ramifications. The end result is a prodigious achievement for Goldberg and a movable feast for the rest of us, who are invited in to put on our queer ways of thinking and make ourselves right at home at this sumptuous table of ideas.

[Liza · Rating 5 out of 5]

when i started this i thought it was trying too hard to be fake academic and i am very invested in queer as an identity/art category so some of the arguments were a little hard for me but by the time it got to crying at an audre lorde documentary i was in love.

[Sarah Schulman]

Enjoyed this broad reaching work of literary criticism and experience. Ariel Goldberg takes on Frank O'Hara's insistence that the work they see matters, and that these artists are people we should know. Cohering lesbian and Queer multi-generations, they ask good questions and pose them too. Fun to read.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE THIS BOOK. On the trouble with naming, or not naming, and categorizing. On curation, assimilation, resistance, belonging and not belonging, literature and photography and the label "queer art." So smart and thoughtful, and with lol-moments of humor too.

[Kenning JP Garcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found myself arguing and agreeing with this book. Some spots were very offputting as a bit policing of what is "queer art" but overall, a very well-written book by a sincere writer who is if not necessarily looking for answers then just looking and observing. If you're queer get this book. If you're not then get it even sooner.

[michal k-c · Rating 3 out of 5]

informative, provocative, entirely anecdotal, et cetera. still think the book was far more unkind to Judith Butler than need be, but that’s, like, Butler’s cross to bear i guess. Still, it’s great that someone broached this topic in an incredibly accessible way, and if nothing else it offers a wealth of related sources in the notes.

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The fear of offending is the result of living in a time of deadening professionalism."

[Madeleine]

i love the archive goldberg sits in within this book, and the way they unabashedly discuss -- with gossipy delight -- the conditions through which they approach art! helpful set of questions surrounding the now-frequently-flung-around (in large liberal cities) term Queer Art that makes me think more carefully and precisely surrounding the lovely and fraught complexity clinging to the term