Queer-theoretical accounts of intimacy in particular have been decisively shaped by readings of art and literature and psychoanalytic reflection. In this context, British philosopher Tim Dean’s 2009 Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking has presented a crucial intervention. For Dean, the practice of condom-less sex and ‘breeding’ becomes a place to reinvent community and ethics. For the past ten years, Dean’s thinking has evolved around questions of infection, pharmaceutical regimes, and the forms of the self and the social that come with them. His talk ‘How to Have Sex in a Pandemic’ echoes the title of Douglas Crimp’s seminal 1987 essay about AIDS ‘How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic?’.

The talk will be live-streamed on the pages of ICI-Berlin April 26 2021 from 7 pm. After the lecture Tim will discuss queer intimacy during times of a global health crisis with ICI fellow Ben Nichols and Peter Rehberg, head of the archives of the Schwules Museum. The language will be English.