Blood of the poets: the tribal '80s.(Critical Essay)

I. "We are born into a preinvented existence within a tribal nation of zombies and in that illusion of a one-tribe nation there are real tribes," New York artist and writer David Wojnarowicz stated in 1991, the year before his AIDS-related death. Fighting the homogenizing forces of state power and nationalist ideology had been a central task Wojnarowicz had set for himself throughout his career.

Time and again he directed attention toward the million tribes within the phantasmic "one-tribe nation," perhaps most prominently in the now legendary essay he contributed ...

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