I have to get out of this bad habit of taking on too many books at once. I get all gung-ho about reviewing anything that appears interesting to me–well, as gung-ho as a Mennonite can get (I’m lapsed, so it’s pretty damn easy)–and then I realize I’m behind on about two dozen book reviews. In this case, however, it was necessary to extend the “behind-on-books” list to just one more than two dozen.
Or, you know, 25.
I recently received a copy of Jamie Heckert and Richard Cleminson’s collection of essays, Anarchism and Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships and Power (Routledge Press).
The title makes me think of a Foucaultian-Chomskian love-child. Wouldn’t be all bad, now would it?
I normally find myself bored with academic books before I’ve even finished reading the back cover. Too many graduate students striving to say something never before said by trying so hard to be as cryptic/pedantic/obnoxious as possible.
It’s not working. Nobody but the 7 people who showed up at your silly presentation cares, even your adviser nodded of, so stop it.
This book, however, looks entirely promising. Issues of sexuality, gender, and its possible correlation with anarchism has gotta be anything but boring, right? The smashing of arbitrarily constructed borders and the subverting of bogus divisions created by authoritarian hierarchies, especially as prized in the academy, makes me all giddy inside. So, I’m going to go read it now (sorry, other 24, you’ve been trumped), and I’m banking that it will give me something to write about later.