Screen Love

Tom Roach

Description

In work, play, education, and even healthcare, we are using social media during COVID-19 to approximate "normal life" before the pandemic. In Screen Love, Tom Roach urges us to do the opposite. Rather than highlight the ways that social media might help reproduce the pre-pandemic status quo, Roach explores how Grindr and other dating/hookup apps can help us envision a radically new normal: specifically, antinormative conceptions of selfhood and community. Although these media are steeped in neoliberal relational and communicative norms, they offer opportunities to reconceive subjectivity and ethics in ways that defy normative psychological and sexual paradigms. In the virtual cruise, Roach argues, we might experience a queer sociability in which participants are formally interchangeable avatar-objects. On Grindr and other m4m platforms, a model of selfhood championed in liberal-humanist traditions—an intelligent, altruistic, eloquent, and emotionally expressive self—is often a liability. By teasing out the queer ethical and political potential of an antisocial, virtual fungibility, Roach compels readers to think twice about media typically dismissed as sordid, superficial, and narcissistic. Written for students, professors, and nonacademics alike, Screen Love is an accessible, provocative, and at times subversively funny read.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Preface

Introduction: Screen Lessons in the Classroom

1. Screen Lessons in the ICU

2. Fail Better at Romance!

3. Dare to Be Indifferent (or, How to Become a Cat Person)

4. Embodied Echoes and Virtual Affordances

5. Becoming Fungible

6. Shut Up! in the Digital Closet

Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Media studies
• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438482095
• Langue: English

Extrait

SCREEN LOVE
SCREEN LOVE
Queer Intimacies in the Grindr Era
TOM ROACH
Cover Image: Juan Pablo Echeverri, futuroSEXtraños . 2016. 60 inkjet prints: 400 × 240 cm. Obtained by the artist. Reproduced with the permission of the artist.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Roach, Tom, author.
Title: Screen love : queer intimacies in the grindr era / Tom Roach.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438482071 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438482095 (ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memoriam Gary C. Thomas (1946–2019)
Contents
L IST OF I LLUSTRATIONS
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
P REFACE
I NTRODUCTION Screen Lessons in the Classroom
C HAPTER O NE Screen Lessons in the ICU
C HAPTER T WO Fail Better at Romance!
C HAPTER T HREE Dare to Be Indifferent (or, How to Become a Cat Person)
C HAPTER F OUR Embodied Echoes and Virtual Affordances
C HAPTER F IVE Becoming Fungible
C HAPTER S IX Shut Up! in the Digital Closet
B IBLIOGRAPHY
I NDEX
Illustrations
Figure 1.1 Laerdal, Inc. LLEAP Patient Monitor (Source: https://www.laerdal.com/us/products/tech/patient-monitor-options-lleap-and-simpad-plus/ . Accessed 21 February 2020).
Figure 1.2 GiveForward splash page (Source: http://www.giveforward.com . Accessed 1 September 2014 [no longer active]).
Figure 1.3 GiveForward splash page (Source: http://www.giveforward.com . Accessed 20 February 2020).
Figure 1.4 Grindr MyType feature (Source: https://help.grindr.com/hc/en-us/articles/224271948-I-have-a-specific-type-How-do-I-search-using-filters- . Accessed 21 February 2020).
Figure 4.1 The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt (Source: https://laughingsquid.com/the-aids-memorial-quilt-goes-online-in-an-incredible-digital-exhibit/ . Accessed 21 February 2020).
Figure 5.1 Grindr collage (2020). Obtained by Grindr, LLC. Reproduced with the permission of Grindr, LLC.
Figure 5.2 Scruff grid (2020). Obtained by Source Code Communications. Reproduced with the permission of Tyler Stafford.
Figure 5.3 Andy Warhol (1928–1987) Copyright. 100 Cans . 1962. Casein, spray paint and pencil on cotton, support: 72 × 52 inches (182.88 × 132.08 cm); framed with Plexi cap: 78⅛ × 58¾ × 4⅜ inches (198.44 × 149.23 × 1 1.1 1 cm). Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1963 (K 1963:26). Copyright the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, New York State, USA. Photo Credit: Albright-Knox Art Gallery/Art Resource, NY.
Figure 5.4 René Magritte (1898–1967) Copyright La Trahison des images ( Ceci n’est pas une pipe ). [The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe)]. 1929. Oil on canvas. Overall: 25⅜ × 37 in. (64.45 × 93.98 cm). Unframed canvas: 23 1 1/16 7/7 inches, 1½ inches deep, 39⅝ inches diagonal. Purchased with funds provided by the Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection (78.7). Los Angeles County Museum of Art Digital Image, 2020 Museum Associates / LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY.
Figure 6.1 Grindrbot (Source: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/08/11/warning-these-grindr-profiles-are-actually-robots-trying-to-steal-your-info/ . Accessed 21 February 2020).
Figure 6.2 “Emily Dickinson” chat (Source: https://mic.com/articles/105860/the-10-most-hilarious-grindr-conversations-with-emily-dickinson . Accessed 21 February 2020).
Figure 6.3 “Emily Dickinson” chat (Source: https://mic.com/articles/105860/the-10-most-hilarious-grindr-conversations-with-emily-dickinson . Accessed 21 February 2020).
Figure 6.4 “Emily Dickinson” chat (Source: http://grindrtextsfromemily.tumblr.com . Accessed 21 February 2020).
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Jordan Greenwald, Kelie Montalvo, and the editorial board of Qui Parle for soliciting and publishing the conceptual backbone of this book: “Becoming Fungible: Queer Intimacies in Social Media” ( Qui Parle 23, no. 2, 2015). I am grateful to Leo Bersani, Glyn Davis, Shaka McGlotten, Peter Rehberg, and John Paul Ricco for their feedback on that article. A revised version of it appears as chapter 5, “ Becoming Fungible .” I am likewise indebted to Thomas Waugh and Brandon Arroyo for soliciting and publishing “Shut Me Up in Grindr: Anticonfessional Discourse and Sensual Nonsense in MSM Media” in I Confess: An Anthology of Original Essays on Constructing the Self within the Third Sexual Revolution (McGill-Queens University Press, 2019). A revised version of that essay appears as chapter 6, “ Shut Up! in the Digital Closet .” I am thankful to Kir Kuiken for inviting me to review Mikko Tuhkanen’s The Essentialist Villain: On Leo Bersani for Postmodern Culture (28, no. 3, 2019). Portions of that review appear in the introduction and chapter 1 . Michelle Stewart, my writing partner on “Teaching Homo Economicus : Strategies for the Neoliberal Classroom” ( AEQ 14, no. 2, 2010), deserves credit for formulating the lion’s share of that article’s key points, some of which I summarize in chapter 1 . Finally, a brief section of my chapter “Make Live and Let Die: Michel Foucault, Biopower, and the Art of Dying Well” in Erin Dolgoy, Kimberly Hurd Hale, and Bruce Peabody’s edited volume, Political Philosophies of Aging, Dying, and Death (Routledge, 2021 [forthcoming]) also appears in chapter 1 .
I am profoundly indebted to the peer reviewers of my original manuscript. Your careful reading and constructive criticism undoubtedly made this a better book. I also owe a lot to my editor, Rebecca Colesworthy, who guided me through the publication process with encouraging words and unwavering confidence in the project. Besos to Juan Pablo Echeverri for the amazing cover art; may we never be “future strangers.” Sincere thanks to the Bryant University students of LCS 471, “Friendship and Intimacy in the Age of Social Media,” for allowing me to experiment with the conceptual premises of this book in the classroom. I am likewise grateful to Bryant University’s Department of English and Cultural Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, and Faculty Development Committee for supporting my research and awarding me the most precious of all commodities, time, to complete this project. Special thanks to Sam Simas for revision guidance and to Bryant’s librarians and Writing Center staff for hosting biannual writers’ retreats. My “field correspondents”—Mark Carpenter, Alan Emtage, Nathan Lee, and Michael Rhodes—deserve a cut of this book’s royalties for regaling me with stories of their hookup app experiences. (Your checks are in the mail.) Last but not least, my deep love and gratitude to Jim Greene for putting up with me and keeping me sane through the writing and revision process.
I dedicate this book to Gary Craig Thomas (1946–2019), whose curiosity inspired me, whose knowledge floored me, whose sunniness warmed me, and whose joyful laugh echoes through these pages.
Preface
Since COVID-19 has forced many of us, typically the most privileged among us, to work and socialize from home, screen-mediated intimacies have taken on a new significance. We connect with work colleagues over platforms like Zoom to maintain some semblance of business as usual. We gather with friends in virtual grids to share socially distanced drinks during a quarantine happy hour. We teach and learn from home, through screens, hoping that some iota of knowledge sticks despite various domestic distractions. We teleconference with doctors to avoid infecting others and being infected. In work, play, education, and healthcare, among other places, we are using social media during the pandemic to approximate “normal life” before the pandemic.
I assert that we should do the opposite. Rather than highlight the ways that social media can help us reproduce the pre-pandemic status quo, I explore how screen-mediated connection can help us envision a radically new normal: specifically, antinormative conceptions of selfhood and community. As the race gaps in COVID-19 deaths reveal (Oppel Jr., et al.), and as the activists currently protesting a social order built on the subjugation and murder of Black bodies teach us, systemic racism has been an intrinsic and fundamental feature of “normal life” in America since the birth of the nation. Moreover, even though nearly half of the U.S. population is currently jobless due to pandemic-induced shutdowns (Li), the U.S. stock market proves, once again, that its success depends very little on the health of the American workforce or the unemployment rate (Ratner). We are therefore forced, once again, to reckon with the fact that “business as usual” rewards only the chosen, typically undeserving few, while the vast majority of Amer