Customer Reviews

Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking

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This book is a (beautifully written) exploration of some of the meanings that characterize barebacking culture. I especially enjoyed the analysis of barebacking porn, where Dean manages to interpret and probe some of the more obscure representation and desires that animate this genre. Dean is largely non-judgemental of this subculture, which is so refreshing, and he manages to explore some things that empirical HIV social science generally won't go near or touch, just because people aren't quite as articulate in qualitative interviews as their unconscious is imaginative. At the same time, I feel like Dean is occasionally at risk of collapsing the meanings surrounding unprotected sex into a coherent, unitary set of meanings, when surely there are a whole range of reasons for the practice in different contexts, not all of them about building some sort of non-normative gay brotherhood! The latter interpretation sure is imaginative, but as much a fantasy sustained by the author's readings as anything actually 'there' in the subculture. I really enjoyed the read anyhow.

Tim Dean's "Unlimited Intimacy" is a fascinating and provocative piece of work. It is disturbing but asks the reader to reflect on one's disturbance with a Foucaldian sensibility, i.e. to reflect on how regulatory systems create what disturbs us. Maintaining a balancing act between trying to look at barebacking from inside the subculture, without passing judgement either for or against, he challenges the reader to traverse both the unconscious and subversive thrusts of barebacking culture to create a sexual kinship system that takes back male homosexuality from the effects of AIDS, and the cultural imperative to avoid risk, especially health risks, despite the cost of sacrificing one's relationship to pleasure. It also is an encyclopedic reference book on multiple aspects of contemporary gay culture.

Unlimited Intimacy (UI) is entirely unprecedented in its courage and candor. Though provocative in so many ways, starting with its cover and title, UI is most provocative as a sharply and carefully reasoned discussion of many current topics that are clinically, theoretically, and politically charged, including issues of cruising, pornography, gay marriage, and community most broadly. Briskly written and stunningly smart and wide-ranging, UI embodies a resolutely analytic stance in its efforts to frankly say what people actually do, not just rush to interpret them, and to think out loud about difficult issues that cannot continue to be avoided. UI has immediately joined Dean's other 2 key texts, Beyond Sexuality, and, Homosexuality & Psychoanalysis, in the essential canon of queer theory. It is inconceivable that anyone could write again about psychoanalysis, gender, and sexuality without taking UI and Dean's other groundbreaking work into account.

Thank you, Tim Dean, for this brave book. I read it after Beyond Sexuality, which I also liked a lot because it reminded me about some things my parents used to say about Freud in relation to anal health and pleasure. (I grew up in a very healthy clothing-optional family where we openly discussed these things.) I have written about the topic myself, from the perspective of a woman who enjoys that pleasure and the health it brings when practiced in moderation and in a holistic way (see titles below). I admire your courage in studying a subculture that dares to defy cultural norms in such radical ways. It's not a gender-equal or a woman-friendly subculture, but it seems to practice conscious forms of non-monogamy, which it, by-and-large, a good thing in my view. I also appreciate your choice to call the International AIDS Dissidence movement by its own name. Thank you.

Namaste,
Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD
author of Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves (2007)
and of Gaia and the New Politics of Love (2009)