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by David Wojnarowicz
New York: Vintage Books (1991)
In Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration, David Wojnarowicz (1991) provides a close and uncomfortable reading of high culture from the perspective of the streets - by returning us to places, issues and lessons that most of us either have forgotten about, would sooner forget exist, or refuse to admit exist in the first place. Wojnarowicz (1991) states, "I am beginning to beUeve that one of die last frontiers left for radical gesture is the imagination" (p. 120).
I came to Wojnarowicz's work in graduate school circa 1992. Friend and artist Marshall Weber loaned me a copy of Close to the Knives, and Wojnarowicz's attitudes and ideas "blew me away," for here was a contemporary gay artist who was not afraid of his sexual orientation. I felt as if I was reading about my Ufe, my issues, and my fears. In fact, I modeled my dissertation, which is an account of my self-education as a gay artist, on Wojnarowicz's uses of witnessing, anger, and truth-telling in art.
What I was responding to in Close to the Knives, was Wojnarowicz's description and analysis of "FEAR OR DIVERSITY in America," and, specifically, how "street Ufe" impacts art [Wojnarowicz's emphasis]. How dysfunctional famiUes, friendship, AIDS, street life, addictions, poUtics, religion, social class, government, the media, sexual identities, violence, multiculturaUsm, death, loss, and personal artistic development - all issues we deal with both as artists and art educators - affect how we teach and learn. Wojnarowicz's perspective, that of a white gay street kid who grows into both an artist and theorist, challenged me to rethink the many connections between art and Ufe, pedagogy and poUtics, and schools and the streets.
For example, he analyzes homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, and class bias as oppressive symptoms of a control-driven culture that treats its members as objects and not subjects. Having taught in pubUc schools for almost 20 years now, I can attest to how many teachers routinely depend on control and regulation, and use them as substitutes for either a thoughtful pedagogy or a humane sense of being. Wojnarowicz also demonstrates, by his own Ufe experiences, what gets left out of official knowledge: his...