The Brooklyn Rail Interviews Rachel Rabbit White

At the Brooklyn Rail, Rachel Rabbit White talks to Sophia Giovannitti about White's debut, Porn Carnival (Wonder, 2019). "Porn Carnival is Rachel’s first full-length book of poetry, an expansive meditation on both the exhaustion of selling erotic labor under capitalism, and the joyful possibilities of world-building outside of the confines of heteronormative society," writes Giovannitti. An excerpt from their talk:

Rail: Can you imagine a world beyond wage labor?

White: I’m not a fan of sitting down and debating how the utopia will be “after the revolution.” Social change emerges from political struggle and the unexpected inventions that come with it. The technologies and practices that will help us in our struggle for liberation are still largely unimaginable—even fifty years ago, it would have been hard for anyone to imagine the possibility of sex work without brothels or pimps. But first with pagers, and then mobile phones, and then through the internet and the supportive communities and tools that flourished on it, it became a reality, for at least a small number of workers who had access to these tools. So for me, it’s not so much about imagining how things will be in an exercise of world-building, but about holding on to my vision of what a liberated humane life means, and trying to further it in the best way I can. And for me, a world beyond waged labor means a world where labor comes with dignity, and where it doesn’t feel like work because it’s made lighter by the knowledge that it is being performed for a friend, a comrade. It is so hard to imagine a world without waged labor because capitalism touches and taints everything, but I can imagine my commune. I can imagine a life of queer orgies and poetry and drug use—an extension of my parties—and I can much more easily imagine something that would be closer, like decriminalizing sex work or decriminalizing drug use, which makes me feel hopeful.

Read on at the Rail.