Coming soon….August 18, 2026, The MIT Press. Excerpt: “A is for anarchy and V is for the void it opens up in the abandoned buildings that punctuate housing markets. Let this V for vacancy represent one of Gordon Matta- Clark’s many cuts. Let it represent by way of absence the many buildings he cut into and the demolition of them all. The V in the building is not a V for vic-
tory, nor is it a V for vengeance; it is a V for void and it bequeaths nothing. This inheritance, an empty coffer, has been turned into plenitude by art historians and architectural theorists alike. But, when read and reinterpreted through the lenses of queer and trans
theory, the gestural language of the cut, the split, and the void joins the critique of property to an antinormative commentary on family, coherent embodiment and gender conformity.”
The Queer Art of Failure is a bold and playful challenge to conventional ideas of success, productivity, and social norms. Halberstam reframes failure as a creative and radical act, showing how refusing dominant expectations can open space for alternative ways of living, relating, and being. Drawing on film, literature, performance, and popular culture, the book illustrates how failing can be both joyful and empowering, offering readers a way to question what society values.
One of the book’s most compelling strengths is its ability to make the unconventional feel meaningful. Halberstam encourages us to see value in experiences often dismissed as useless or marginal. Failing, resisting, or refusing can be messy, playful, and full of possibility. The examples throughout the text show that life outside mainstream norms can be rich, thought provoking, and full of agency.
At the same time, the book reflects the context in which it was written. While it critiques the gender binary, much of the discussion relies on masculine and feminine categories and on men and women as reference points. Non-binary, agender, and other gender-expansive experiences are not explicitly centred. For readers looking for broader representation, the text can feel limited, queering the binary without fully leaving it behind.
Despite this, the book remains influential and widely read in queer theory and cultural studies. Reading it alongside scholarship that centres non-binary, trans, and intersectional perspectives on race, class, and disability can broaden its insights and make its ideas feel more inclusive. Anyone interested in queer theory, cultural critique, or alternative ways of understanding identity and relationality will find the book rich, inspiring, and deeply thought provoking.
Found here: https://amzn.to/3YBIvKh
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This will be epic!! Jordy Rosenberg will read from his new book, a hilarious, powerful and scathing portrait of a dying mother’s last words to her trans son, and then he will be in conversation with brilliant poet, Meg Fernandes! Register to get through the gates at Columbia. This promises to be a fabulous afternoon of memoir, Marx and mommy!!
Please come to this absolutely incredible event on Thursday. The venue is not directly on campus so you do not have to go through security. It is on 116 between Amsterdam and Morningside. This will be an epic, beautiful conversation and it is what we need right now. No RSVP necessary. Just show up.
A reading of Night Night Fawn, followed by a conversation with author Jordy Rosenberg and poet Megan Fernandes (author of I Do Everything I'm Told).
The link to register is in our bio!
📅 Wednesday, April 15, 2026 | 4:10pm-6:00pm
📍East Gallery, Buell Hall | 515 W 116th St
From the author of Confessions of the Fox comes a novel in which a yenta on her deathbed gives an unrepentant account of all her failures. Barbara Rosenberg - terminally ill, high on opioids, and trapped in a rent-cluttered apartment in the middle of Manhattan - is being cared for by an estranged transgender son whose only condition is that Barbara issue a "Marxist apology" for her life. Thus, into the canon of novels of ideas, comes Night Night Fawn, a forced 'memoir of ideas' that rockets between Barbara's glory days as a jazzercizer, her failed aspirations to be a film noir actress, and her career as the receptionist for a disreputable plastic surgeon. Along the way, Barbara issues proclamations and unhinged theories about gender, Marx, Zionism, and a long-lost bestfriendship that haunts Barbara still. Part novel, part someone's mother's unauthorized memoir - all diatribe, gutter schtick, and deranged manifesto, Night Night Fawn is a ferociously satiric and no-holds barred deep dive into some of the characteristic sociopathies of our time.
Co-sponsored by the Department of English and Comparative Literature, and the History Department at Columbia University, and the Radio in the Orchard.
A beautiful special evening celebrating the publication of “My Father, the Messiah” in the company of dear dear friends in beautiful Bushwick at the best queer bookstore in town. An evening that made me feel mighty real.
A fabulous birthday in Japan. Thanks to my hosts and friends, old and new, in Tokyo and Kyoto. There was even a cake. Also temples and bamboo forests and incredible food. Also fast trains and slow boats, creative sushi chefs and more fish than I have ever eaten in my life. Also, comme de garçons and Shinjuku and chattering art and Ando architecture. We swam, we ate, we marveled.
Go Mayor Mamdani!!! He won against the millionaires and billionaires. Listening to the liberals denounce his victory speech on CNN is pathetic. This is why the Democrats have so little appeal - they see socialist language as more of a threat than fascist agendas. But right now, Mamdani is giving a master class in oratory, in uncompromising commitments to social justice, in the power of solidarity, in how to name and denounce racial capitalism. This is how you win against autocrats - speak out, fight back, stand together.
Speaking tonight at this event at Dartmouth College! If you are in Hanover, stop by! Very cool event organized by Kimberly Juanita Brown and others. My title: Nothing Works: Anarchitecture, Abolition and the End of Everything.
Left NYC at dawn and landed in LAX. Just time for a quick swim in Santa Monica during my layover and then back to the airport for my next flight in my favorite seat - 5A. Destination? Shanghai!! Ni Hao! Cannot wait to be in a very different context than the politically congested, frighteningly explicit fascism here in the US. While national leaders and university administrators fall over themselves to commit to the Trump agenda, we should instead, adapting the words of a past leader, dare to struggle, dare to lose.
@berlinartlink : „If we keep going the way we are with authoritarian regimes everywhere, no breaks on climate crisis, no measures taken to tax the rich, to help the poor, to deliver housing and food, basic necessities to people… if we continue in this mode, we can easily say what will happen next. We’re going to have a series of devastating climate disasters. We are going to have revolutionary movements violently suppressed. We are going to see authoritarian regimes around the world. We know what’s going to happen next. What we need to do is restore the possibility of not knowing what happens next.” - Jack Halberstam.
The Identity Crisis Network — a collective formed by Luka Cvetković, Klara Petrović, Michalina Sablik, Luja Šimunović, and Vera Zalutskaya — brings together artists, curators, and scholars working across disciplines to foster dialogue and collaboration. In May 2025, the @icn__________ organized the International Conference at @msuzagreb , which brought together over 25 participants from diverse backgrounds. Among them was Jack Halberstam, an American academic and author.
Following the conference, Adela Lovric interviewed Jack Halberstam about the architectural language of the body, anarchitecture in the work of artists like Kiyan Williams and Yve Laris Cohen, and the radical potential of unworlding.
You can read the full article at @berlinartlink
