Podcast Summary

Overview of Episode

This episode of the New Books Network, hosted by Caleb Zakrin, features Pierre d’Alancaisez and Amir Naaman, editors of Inversion: Gay Life After the Homosexual (Verdurin, 2025). The conversation explores contemporary gay male identity, the cultural and political crises of “homosexuality,” the limitations of queer theory, and the shifting significance of gay community, art, and transgression. Drawing from their book, which compiles essays from diverse and dissenting voices, the guests challenge prevailing liberal and academic discourses and reflect on what it means for gay men to look back at their own history and cultural production.

1. Origins of the Book and Personal Introductions

• Pierre d’Alancaisez describes his background as a former New Books Network host and organizer of the London-based Verdurin salon, a forum for open intellectual debate, often inspired by works of art or broad cultural themes ([03:38]).

  • He recalls struggling to find spaces for serious, non-culture-war discussion of gay culture, which led to the creation of their book.
  • The aim: Address taboo or neglected topics with a spectrum of perspectives, from "socialist left to Maga Anon, from sex addicts to TR Catholics" ([05:48]).

• Amir Naaman, based in Berlin, shared how the Verdurin salon allowed him to think out loud again and tackle the “unspoken elements of gay culture.”

  • Their event, Gay Amnesia, initially focused on historical aspects, but turned toward confronting present-day realities ([04:58]).

Notable Quote:

"I almost forgot how it is possible to think out loud in today's culture… So it was really a breath of fresh air for me."
— Amir Naaman [04:58]

2. The Book’s Structure and Underlying Questions

• Inversion collects essays from 11 writers, intentionally gathered from dissenting voices within and outside mainstream academic and activist circles ([05:48]).
• The book deliberately questions:
  • The supposed redundancy of the gay male subject in the era of queer theory and neoliberalism.
  • Whether gay men have been absorbed or erased in wider "progressive culture."
  • Why certain topics remain undiscussed, often due to their taboo nature even within queer spaces.

Notable Quote:

"The supposition of the book is that the gay man has sort of made himself redundant. Whether it's through the fact that he was absorbed by queer theory, whether it's because neoliberalism sort of turned everyone gay, or any other reason."
— Pierre d’Alancaisez [13:10]

3. Creating Productive Space for Dissent

• The challenge: How to hold salons and publish essays on controversial topics fearlessly without "people descending into throwing shoes" ([08:40]).
• Methods:
  • Emphasize engagement with artifacts (texts, art) over performance or virtue-signaling.
  • Encourage writers to critique not only their subjects but also themselves, fostering introspective analysis.
  • Protect contributors from groupthink by not circulating drafts among essayists before publication ([11:20]).

Notable Story:

Amir describes a past event discussing Steve Bannon’s interest in Julius Evola which led to reprisal and personal "cancellation," illuminating both the risks and the necessity of spaces for uncomfortable conversations ([10:04]).

4. Why Focus on the Gay Male Identity?

• Both editors are mid-life gay men, lending immediate authority and investment ([15:02]).
• Observations:
  • Increasing irrelevance of "gays" to mainstream progressive narratives.
  • The gay male’s historical roles as outsider, victim, and—lately—figure of normalcy, possibly even a precursor to broader societal changes (e.g., the move to online hookup culture, the normalizing of sexual liberation and consumerism) ([15:42]).

Notable Quote:

"Gay men have been kind of precursors, test rabbit, the foot soldiers of both the sexual liberation movements in the conventionally positive sense. But also they have in a certain reading, been the kind of test rabbit of everything collapsing on itself."
— Pierre d’Alancaisez [15:42]

5. The Evolution and Politics of Language

• The essays deeply analyze contested language: homosexual, gay, queer, inversion, faggotry ([19:43]).
• Each term has different historic, medical, and political resonances:
  • "Homosexual" arises as medical, "gay" as political, "queer" as subversive, and sociopolitical overlays shift with generations ([23:01]).
• The dissonance in terminology reveals disputes about identity and the priorities of community-building versus individuality.

Notable Quote:

"…the homosexual is a medical term to start with, gay is a sort of political term, queer is only a political term. And they have always coexisted. Maybe we can fantasize that people 10 years older than us could be saying, 'oh, I'm homosexual, as opposed to one of those newfangled gays.'"
— Pierre d’Alancaisez [19:43]

6. Critique of Queer Theory

• Ron Hilbrun’s essay "Abolish Queer Theory" receives in-depth discussion ([26:51]):
  • Queer theory, while evading particularities, no longer serves the lived realities or desires of gay men, especially sex between men.
  • Contemporary queer academia is seen as alienating: "…queer theory about gay men is written by women, some of them lesbians, not even all." — Amir Naaman ([27:00])
  • "The big secret about sex: most people don't like it. …there's a secret about queer theorists—they don't like sex very much."
    — Pierre d’Alancaisez, paraphrasing Leo Bersani and others ([28:55])
• The call: Quit funneling energy into queer theory if it can't describe male gay sexuality.

7. Gay Art, Transgression, and the Loss of Friction

• Essays explore how art history is interwoven with the (often submerged) gay male experience—sometimes as outsider and transgressor, sometimes as tragic victim (e.g., Oscar Wilde, Alan Turing) ([32:25]).
• The paradox: Now that gay men enjoy normalcy, some of the friction and outsider creativity that once defined gay art and culture might be lost ([33:41]).
• Travis Jeppesen’s essay on "Gay Shame" reflects on the evacuation of transgression: what happens when the outsider stance is absorbed/institutionalized ([41:07]).

Notable Exchange:

"The gay man is not an outsider. The queer subject loves to tell us he's an outsider, but it just isn't."
— Pierre d’Alancaisez [39:08]

8. The Notion of "Bad Gays"

• Oliver Davis’ essay investigates what happens when gay men express views outside liberal orthodoxy, focusing on controversial figures like Renaud Camus (author of the "Great Replacement" theory) ([46:39]).
• The "bad gay" becomes a moral other—a move the editors argue is a mistake: "…to deny that not only is everyone capable of both good and evil, but the construction that somehow the bad gay is a special type of a gay… is not the case." ([50:10])
• Amir notes you "can’t have a bad queer," reinforcing how the "queer" framework sets behavioral boundaries.

9. Queer Activism, Desire, and the Politics of Transgression

• Amir’s essay explores the link between activism, sexual/cultural desire, and performance.
  • "Transgressive queers are a result of a capitalist free society," producing individuals "who cannot get hurt" ([57:14]).
  • Much of activism is seen as sexual cosplay: "what is masquerading as political ideas are actually some kind of sexual cosplay… like in S&M play, the dominant and the submissive… expanded into geopolitics" ([58:42]).
• Examples from cultural works (e.g., One Battle After Another) and "Queers for Palestine" activism illustrate the psychosexual aspects of political identification ([60:27]).

Notable Quote:

"There is a way of thinking about actions like Queers for Palestine through this…sexiness of desire. And this is possibly sort of a contentious reading, but actually, this is a reading that's completely fleshed out in the historical record."
— Pierre d’Alancaisez [60:27]

10. Rethinking the Gay Community

• Pierre’s essay, "Freedom of Disassociation," questions whether a genuine gay "community" ever truly existed ([65:29]).
  • Uses examples like the AIDS crisis, the roll-out of PrEP, and inconsistent commemorations of violence against gays (e.g., Matthew Shepard, Pulse shooting) to demonstrate how solidarity is conditional and fleeting ([65:29-71:40]).
  • Drawing on Roberto Esposito, he concludes: "the homosexual is probably best left alone as a lone wolf and deserves neither pity nor rescue."
    ([71:40])

11. Future Directions

• Both editors are cautious about tackling the exact same subject again, but Pierre wants to explore cultural politics amidst populist and right-wing turns in Europe and the West ([73:37]).
• Amir is interested in the supernatural and the "hate/self-hate" dynamic in culture and politics ([75:07]).
• They are launching a publishing imprint to house more contentious and serious work ([75:46]).

Key Timestamps

• 03:38 – Pierre introduces the Verdurin salon & genesis of the book
• 05:48 – Scope and aims of Inversion collection
• 11:20 – Editorial process: fostering real critique & self-examination
• 15:02 – On focusing the volume on gay male identity
• 19:43 – The politics and history of language (homosexual, gay, queer)
• 26:51 – Ran Hilbrun's “Abolish Queer Theory”
• 32:25 – Discussion on gay art, transgression, and insiders/outsiders
• 41:07 – Travis Jeppesen and the institutionalization of transgression
• 46:39 – Oliver Davis' essay on "bad gays": Renaud Camus and the Great Replacement
• 55:53 – Queer activism and “wars of desire” (Amir’s essay)
• 65:29 – Pierre on the problematic idea of “gay community”
• 73:37 – Future publishing projects and directions

Memorable Quotes

• “Quite a lot of the things we cover are taboo in a way that they would not be acceptable within a queer theory department, would not make it into mainstream media… All of them are quite serious, but they range from socialist left to Maga Anon. They range from sex addicts to TR Catholics. Yeah, so this is what we try to do.”
  — Pierre d’Alancaisez [05:48]

• "I do say this is a safety space. Or rather the best trick is you don't actually let the other contributors read the book before it's published. So… we encouraged them to engage with the pertinent questions. And we actually wrote a commissioning brief with sort of slightly incendiary [elements]. …And please include yourself as the subject of critique."
  — Pierre d’Alancaisez [13:10]

• “Queer theory as a description of sexuality does not serve homosexual sex in any sense… And I think that leaves a void which can only be filled if we stop putting energy into queer theory. Queer theory cannot produce a description of male gay sexuality. It's just not possible.”
  — Pierre d’Alancaisez [28:55]

• "A lot of times we associate with today with gender, things which are not necessarily of gender. …I wonder if the great artists were homosexual and became great artists or they had just this kind of...they were outsiders and it somehow brought them either to homosexual[ity], or maybe they were not actually homosexual as we understand them today."
  — Amir Naaman [34:07]

• “We are capable of producing whole social settlements in which sexuality is twinned with a completely different idea. The idea of a righteous struggle gets displaced... the fact that the people of Gaza are suffering horrendously is elevating for those who observe from the West and sort of project themselves onto histories of struggle.”
  — Pierre d’Alancaisez [62:35]

• “I conclude that the homosexual is probably by his very nature, the nature, the kind of the eigene that I referred to earlier, the unique, that the homosexual is probably best left alone as a lone wolf and deserves neither pity nor rescue.”
  — Pierre d’Alancaisez [71:40]

Concluding Thoughts

• Inversion: Gay Life After the Homosexual asserts that gay male identity has lost both its cultural centrality and its productive outsider status, in part due to assimilation and in part due to hijacking by other forms of identity politics.
• The editors and contributors aim to incite debate, challenge taboos, and encourage honest reevaluation of gay cultural, intellectual, and community formations—sometimes with biting humor, discordant takes, and no small amount of doomerism.
• As Pierre notes, “this was a way to get aspects of this out of the system,” but it remains an open invitation to further, braver, and broader conversations.