Queer Heritage/Queer Horizons: Disruptive Temporality in the Works of David Wojnarowicz

In its privileging of heterosexual sex, heteronormative society centres around the notion of reproductive 'heritage', in which time is experienced as a structured, linear narrative. Examining the works of David Wojnarowicz in relation to modern queer theory, this dissertation explores how Wojnarowicz conceptualises queerness as a utopian modality that disrupts these temporal structures. Although this queerness exists only as an idealised futurity, Wojnarowicz suggests the potential of queer erotics–as a rejection of reproductive linearity–to evoke this utopian space. However, Wojnarowicz indicates how the emergence of AIDS, in its modifying of sexual discourses, reconfigures the queer erotic body as a site of structured temporality, thereby eliminating its disruptive potential. Wojnarowicz instead turns to the production of art which, in its capacity to transcend the limits of the physical body, allows him to continue to predict this utopian queer space.