RELIEF OCEAN
Studies in Gender and Sexuality July 3, 2025 DOI: 10.1080/15240657.2025.2532270 (opens in new tab) via OpenAlex
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractThe essay explores the spiritual and mystical dimensions of affective states experienced during depression, sickness, psychedelia, art, queer love, friendship, and grief. It begins with a reflection on the writer's artistic collaboration with his late ex-boyfriend Billy, who died in December 2024 after a multiyear battle with cancer. Drawing on Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet and Jackie Wang's Oceanic Feeling and Communist Affect, the essay connects threads through the writer's recent filmic collaborations with intimate interlocutors and communities in India and Guyana, sites of his ancestral lineage. It asks how the oceanic might open new conceptions of collective and personal resistance on a vast scale.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Feeling Battle Poetry Resistance ecology Queer |
| Key finding | Argues that oceanic feelings can open new conceptions of collective and personal resistance. |
Abstract
“RELIEF OCEAN” is a poetic rumination on the spiritual/mystical possibilities that swim alongside affective states experienced during depression and sickness, but also in psychedelia, art, queer love and friendship, and in grief. This essay begins with a reflection on the writer’s artistic collaboration with his late ex-boyfriend Billy, who died in December 2024 after a multiyear battle with cancer. Drawing upon Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet (1986) and Jackie Wang’s Oceanic Feeling and Communist Affect, the essay loops threads through the writer’s more recent filmic collaborations with intimate interlocutors and communities in India and Guyana, sites of his ancestral lineage. How might the oceanic open us toward new conceptions of collective and personal resistance on a vast scale?