17 for 2017: Yasmin Nair recommends Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion
By Chase Joynt
12. Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion edited by Ryan Conrad recommended by Yasmin Nair
Throughout my tenure as the December Writer-In-Residence, I will be assembling a list of 17 must-read-books for 2017. To accomplish this numerically satisfying task, I have asked 17 people whose work I adore to suggest one title for the list. Consult the end of each post for the growing list of recommendations!
I met Yasmin Nair in 2013 when she walked through the doors of a gallery at the University of Chicago. Installed there was my multi-media show Resisterectomy, and on that day, Nair would be responsible for setting a new public course for the project by publishing a spread in the Chicago Reader. After our first meeting – and as anyone with anxiety might do – I went home and furiously started googling her writing. To say I’ve been a fan of Nair ever since would be an understatement. She is an indispensable commentator and cultural critic of many historical and political scenes – from electoral practices and labour rights, to LGBT activisms – I often find myself wondering: “What would Yasmin do or think?” (If anyone would like to help me brand “WWYD” bracelets – similar to the ones they make about Jesus – please e-mail me!). Nair is responsible for an exhaustive online archive of articles and other writings. I often return to her ideas with the hopes of finding new keys to unlock different, and desperately needed political futures.
From Yasmin:
Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion is an anthology edited by my friend and comrade and Montreal resident Ryan Conrad, a co-founder of Against Equality, a queer radical editorial collective. Full disclosure: I have pieces in it (it's a collection of what were once three separate books), but I'm recommending it as an excellent collection of some of the best queer radical writing and perspectives out there. Living as I do in Chicago, I never thought I'd be saying the words "President Trump." But the truth is that I was not looking forward to a Hillary Clinton presidency either, as suffused as it would be with normative liberal (and war-mongering) politics. Over the last many years, I've seen the "left," such as it is, lurch from side to side as it tried to find its way. My biggest concern right now is that a Trump presidency will mean that radicals and leftists will now dispense with a truly world-changing political framework and opt, instead, to be defined by a conservative and liberal agenda as they try to justify their existence. This book provides thoughtful but critical perspectives on what radical politics on matters like marriage and intimacy, the prison industrial complex, and an increasingly militarised world, can look like. It serves as a solid reminder of the world that we can still imagine, a world that is still possible.
Stay tuned as we build the ultimate 2017 reading list!
17 for 2017:
1. Mariko Tamaki recommends The Land of Forgotten Girls
2. Sheila Heti recommends The Normal Personality: A New Way of Thinking about People
3. Vivek Shraya recommends The Mothers
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4. Kate Bornstein recommends Siddhartha
5. Casey Mecija recommends Tropical Renditions: Making Musical Scenes in Filipino America
6. Morgan M. Page recommends Small Beauty
7. Lauren Berlant recommends Long Division and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America
8. Chase Strangio recommends Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation
9. Jamie Keiles recommends The Group
10. Sarah Joynt recommends The Hour of the Star
11. John Greyson recommends Citizen: An American Lyric
December Writer-In-Residence
Chase Joynt is a filmmaker and writer. His latest two films Genderize and Between You and Me are now streaming live online with CBC Digital Docs. His first book, You Only Live Twice (co-authored with Mike Hoolboom) was published by Coach House Books and just named one of the Best Books of 2016 by The Globe and Mail and CBC. His second book The Case of Agnes (co-authored with Kristen Schilt) is forthcoming from Duke University Press.
The views expressed in the Writer-in-Residence blogs are those held by the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Open Book.
Chase Joynt is a Toronto-based moving-image artist and writer who has exhibited his work internationally. He recently received a Mellon Fellowship in Arts Practice and Scholarship at the University of Chicago.
You can write to Chase throughout the month of December at writer@open-book.ca.
