Muñoz and the Mystical Tradition

Abstract

José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia has assumed an emblematic status in queer of color critique's temporal orientation by cementing its attachment to the future. This association between queer of color critique and queer futurity emerges in large part from its opposition to the so-called antisocial thesis in queer theory—an opposition that is infamously staged as a conflict between Muñoz's utopianism and Lee Edelman's polemic against reproductive futurity. This essay proffers an opportunity to escape from the quagmire of this binary with a turn to the premodern past. I suggest that Muñoz's turn to religion makes available an alternative way of conceiving relationality and antirelatonality in the example of Teresa of Ávila. Ultimately, the Christian mystical tradition not only shifts queer of color critique's temporal orientation to the Middle Ages but also highlights the inseparability of queer community formation and queer negation.