Reading from behind : a cultural analysis of the anus

Jonathan A. Allan

With grace and elegance, Jonathan Allan asks us to admit that the anus seems caught up in a grand narrative; the very 'ground zero of gayness'. So what is our critical obsession with orientation? What would happen if we privileged the anal dimensions of texts and of cultural analysis? What if we relaxed, loosened up our critical inquiries, embraced the fullness of the pleasure of the text, and removed ourselves from the hermeneutics of suspicion? In a resolute deviation from the governing totality of the phallus, the very site of difference, Reading from Behind offers a radical reorientation of the anus and its role in the collective imaginary. It exposes what is deeply hidden in our cultural production, to fundamentally diminish, if not negate, the seemingly unquestioned authority of paranoid, critical thought. A beautiful work that invites us beyond the rejection of phallocentricism, beyond the remarkable pleasure and privilege of not knowing and unknowing, to a space of inclusion.