Feral city : on finding liberation in lockdown New York / Jeremiah Moss.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Moss, Jeremiah, 1971- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-2023--New York (State)--New York.

COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-2023.

New York (N.Y.)--Social life and customs--21st century.

New York (N.Y.).

New York (N.Y.)--Social conditions--21st century.

New York (N.Y.)--History--1951-.

Manners and customs.

Social conditions.

New York (State)--New York.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

278 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

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

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"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: PART ONE

1. The Before Time (Somewhere in 2019)

PART TWO

2. Emptiness Gives Permission

3. Just Before the Revolution, a Certain Atmosphere Arises

PART THREE

4. The Phase of Breaking

5. Queer Negativity: Not Gay as in Happy, but Queer as in Fuck You

6. The Cop in My Head

7. To Be of Use

8. The Return of Revanchism

9. A Queer Longing for Ruins and Mud

10. New York Fuckin City

11. Queer Time

12. You Wanted the 1970s, You Got the 1970s

13. Moving Out in Mountains

PART FOUR

14. I Would Prefer Not To

15. Hauntology

16. One Week in November

17. Good Old Bad Old New York

PART FIVE

18. Back to Normal

19. Killing the Vibe

20. Rebellion in Washington Square

21. Between the Waves.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [267]-278).

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9780393868470

0393868478

OCLC:

1294288914