«Looking for the ultimate»: Sex, Truth and Anarchism in Dennis Cooper's The Sluts

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54103/2282-0035/29036

Keywords:

Dennis Cooper, The Sluts, American Literature, anarchist thought, Emma Goldman

Abstract

This paper aims to explore The Sluts (2004), the most significant commercial and critical success of American author Dennis Cooper. Revisiting and reformulating the imaginary developed in the five novels comprising the George Miles Cycle, Cooper constructs a fictional online community within an escort review site through an innovative literary form that anticipates contemporary media writing. Central to this community is the users’ veneration of Brad, a figure around whom a literary discourse unfolds, one that persistently reflects on the possibilities of language in relation to desire. In The Sluts, this discourse both materializes and disperses within the web network. The novel thus becomes a site for examining the divergence between factual reality and the reality of desire, through the narrative’s engagement with the notions of truth, the transcendent, and the eerie. Moreover, it allows for a reflection on Cooper’s anarchic intellectual stance, particularly regarding the relationship between the individual and the community, in dialogue with the anarchist thought of Emma Goldman.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Gianmaria Borzillo, University of Milan

Gianmaria Borzillo is a director and choreographer active in the field of performing arts, as well as an independent researcher. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Literature from the University of Milan, with a thesis in Aesthetics on the work of director Bruno Dumont, and a Master’s degree in Modern Literature with a thesis on the narrative work of Dennis Cooper. His research interests include, among others, American literature and the aesthetics of cinema.

References

AARON 2004: M. Aaron, Fill-in-the Blank Fiction: Dennis Cooper’s Cinematic and the Complicitious Reader, «Journal of Modern Literature» 27.3, 2004, pp. 115-127.

BRESSON 1975 : R. Bresson, Notes sur le cinématographe, Parigi, Gallimard, 1975.

BRINTNALL 2015: K. L. Brintnall, Transcribing Desire. Mystical Theology in Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts, in The Poetics of Transcendence, Elisa Heinämäki, P.M. Mehtonen, Antti Salminen (edited by), Brill | Rodopi, Leida, 2015, pp. 59-80.

COOPER 1982: D. Cooper, The Tenderness of The Wolves, New York, The Crossing Press, 1982.

COOPER 1994: D. Cooper, The Dream Police: Selected Poems '1969–1993, Grove Press, New York 1994.

COOPER 2005: D. Cooper, The Sluts, New York, Carol and Graff, 2005.

DELEUZE - GUATTARI 1980: G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, Mille plateaux. Capitalisme et Schizophrénie, Parigi, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1980.

FISHER 2017: M. Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, Londra, Repeater, 2017.

GOLDMAN 2022: E. Goldman, The Essential Emma Goldman, Anarchism, Feminism, Liberation, a cura di U. Baer, N. Roy, New York, Warbler Press, 2002.

HESTER 2020: D. Hester, Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper, Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 2020.

JANKELEVITCH 2011 : V. Jankélévitch, L’ironie, Flammarion, Parigi 2011.

RUBIN 2021: G. S. Rubin, Deviatons: A Gayle Rubin Reader, Duke University Press, Londra 2021.

RUSZCZYCKY 2021: S. Ruszczycky, Vulgar Genres. Gay Pornographic Writing and Contemporary Fiction, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2021.

Copertina Acme, Annali della Facoltà di Studi Umanistici dell'Università degli Studi di Milano, 1-2/2025

Downloads

Published

2025-12-29

How to Cite

Borzillo, G. (2025). «Looking for the ultimate»: Sex, Truth and Anarchism in Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts. ACME, 78(1-2), 520–552. https://doi.org/10.54103/2282-0035/29036

Issue

Vol. 78 No. 1-2 (2025):

Section

"Keep reading": on 'The Sluts' of Den Cooper (Giuseppe Carrara and Marco Malvestio)nis

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Gianmaria Borzillo

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

(Estratto del contratto di edizione)

L'autore concede a ACME il diritto di pubblicare per la prima volta o ripubblicare l’opera entro un anno dalla consegna definitiva e quello perpetuo di distribuirla gratuitamente al pubblico su qualsiasi supporto e in qualunque parte del mondo, ivi compresa la comunicazione al pubblico tramite il sito Web della rivista;

L'autore mantiene il diritto di creare opere derivate e di riprodurre, distribuire, eseguire o mostrare pubblicamente la sua opera in occasione di docenze, conferenze o presentazioni, o altre opere di natura scientifica e attività professionali esplicitando la pubblicazione su ACME;

L'autore mantiene il diritto di diffondere ad accesso aperto, tramite il proprio sito web o tramite un archivio istituzionale o disciplinare, l’opera dal momento della sua pubblicazione su ACME;

L'autore rinuncia, d’accordo con l’Editore, a qualunque eventuale forma di remunerazione accordata dalla normativa nazionale vigente ad autori ed editori per i diritti di reprografia a scopo non di lucro e prestito bibliotecario.