Feral city : on finding liberation in lockdown New York
Book

Feral city : on finding liberation in lockdown New York

By Moss, Jeremiah, 1971- author.

Published [2022] by W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY

ISBN 9780393868470

Bib Id 2542678

Edition First edition.

Description pages cm

More Details

Leader
04772cam a22005058i 4500
LCCN
2022-030282
ISBN
9780393868470 (hardcover) $27.95
0393868478
Call #
307.7609 M
Title
Feral city : on finding liberation in lockdown New York
Edition
First edition.
Publication Information
[2022] by W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY :
Description
pages cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
Contents
The Before Time (Somewhere in 2019) -- Emptiness Gives Permission -- Just Before the Revolution, a Certain Atmosphere Arises -- The Phase of Breaking -- Queer Negativity: Not Gay as in Happy, but Queer as in Fuck You -- The Cop in My Head -- To Be of Use -- The Return of Revanchism -- A Queer Longing for Ruins and Mud -- New York Fuckin City -- Queer Time -- You Wanted the 1970s, You Got the 1970s -- Moving Out in Mountains -- I Would Prefer Not To -- Hauntology -- One Week in November -- Good Old Bad Old New York -- Back to Normal -- Killing the Vibe -- Rebellion in Washington Square -- Between the Waves.
Summary
"What happens when an entire social class abandons a metropolis? This genre-bending journey through lockdown New York offers an exhilarating, intimate look at a city returned to its rebellious spirit. The pandemic lockdown of 2020 launched an unprecedented urban experiment. Traffic disappeared from the streets. Times Square fell silent. And half a million residents fled the most crowded city in America. In this innovative and thrilling book, author and social critic Jeremiah Moss, hailed as "New York City's career elegist" (New York Times), explores a city emptied of the dominant class-and their controlling influence. "Plagues have a disinhibiting effect," Moss writes. "As the normal order is suspended, the repressive force of civilization lifts and our rules fall away, shifting the boundaries of society and psyche." In public spaces made vibrant by New Yorkers left behind, Moss experienced an uncanny time warp. Biking through deserted Manhattan, he encountered the hustlers, eccentrics, and renegades who had been pressed into silence and invisibility by an oppressive, normative gentrification, now reemerging to reclaim the city. For one wild year the streets belonged to wandering nudists and wheelie bikers, mystical vagabonds and performance artists working to disrupt the status quo, passionate activists protesting for Black lives-along with the everyday New Yorkers who had been pushed to the margins for too long. Participating in a historic explosion of activism, resistance, and spontaneity, from queer BLM marches to exuberant outdoor dance parties, Moss discovered an intoxicating freedom. Without "hyper-normal" people to constrain it, New York became more creative, connected, humane, and joyful than it had been in years. Moss braids this captivating narrative with an account of his renewed sense of place as a transgender man, weaving together insights from psychoanalysis, literature, and queer theory. A kaleidoscopic vision of a city transformed, Feral City offers valuable insight into the way public space and the spaces inside us are controlled and can be set free"--

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