Betraying Authority: Fragments on Queer Art & Poetry is an essay by Noah LeBien. First notes on trying to move into a more embodied process of evoking queer experience. The whole fetish for an authoritative voice ends up undermining the actual radical possibilities of queer life. How long can we keep fetishizing and commodifying transgressive experiences, repackaging them as radical content and shipping them as marketable products? I don’t want to kill trees just so I can establish myself as an official POET. Embracing the failure to establish authority. Dismantling the entire structure of macho-individualist self-expression. Are we changing academia, or is it changing us? How can we discover, not just our own stories, but our own storytelling?

Noah LeBien is a poet and performer living in Brooklyn. Currently developing music/performance pieces using coding and motion sensor technology to move beyond purely visual representation of queer bodies. Poetry book coming out from Wendy’s Subway.