Unlimited Intimacy

The book begins with an introduction section titled "Confessions of a Barebacker", which explains Dean's role as a participant-observer during the sociological investigation of the themes. As a general text, the book discusses the emergence of the barebacking subculture among gay men in San Francisco during the 1990s. and how this cultural development coincided with the scientific invention of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) as a treatment for HIV that significantly reduced the health impacts from the AIDS condition, turning it into a chronic illness to be controlled via medication. These improvements led to a reduction in the stringency of condom use within the gay community and the creation of the barebacking subculture. While contemplating the reasons behind the subculture's formation, Dean puts forward the concept of barebacking as the "culmination of some men’s desires to explore beyond their usual boundaries" and that their sexual practices allow them to create unlimited intimacy. This idea is put at odds against prior research into the subject and uses psychoanalysis to explain how members of the subculture can't be pidgeonholed into a specific definition. Though Dean, at the same time, criticizes limitations placed on sexual encounters that prevents the potential of his intimacy concept from being achieved due to rules and role constraints within the gay male community. After addressing the history of the subculture, Dean's work also investigates the topic using an ethnological viewpoint that treats the group of individuals studied as a "foreign culture" that has no moral judgements attached or intended. This allowed the author to then document the "language, rituals, etiquette, institutions, [and] iconography" of the subculture. Continuing the discussion of pornography, but from a more kink-based perspective, the third chapter titled "Viral Fetishism, Visual Fetishism" looks into how social taboos have been presented in gay pornographic films. The final chapter titled "Cruising As a Way of Life" discusses how sexual encounters between gay men in modern times, especially with the proliferation of online options, have become less as interactions with others and more "planned as if ordering from a takeout menu". Instead of being focused on as an ethical decision, regardless of moral opinions on the subject, cruising has become focused on object-relating for personal characteristics and sexual interests. ==Critical reception==

In a critique for the journal South Atlantic Review, Lisa Downing referred to Unlimited Intimacy as a "dazzling hybrid of a text" that utilizes a Gedankenexperiment of barebacking culture to view it as a "fantasy of kinship" that is then investigated using Levinasian ethics' withholding of judgement. While there is minor dissention by Downing on the book because of it avoiding too deep a discussion of the potential pathology and "erotic homi/sui-cidal fantasies" contained by some in the culture in order to prevent any encouragement of anti-LGBT political stances, they still found the book to be an important production that is "one of the most thought-provoking works I have read in years". Octavio R. Gonzalez, writing for Cultural Critique, referred to Dean's attempts to depathologize the subject matter as "anti-normative queer politics" that runs counter to the "liberal mainstream" of the LGBT community. Gonzalez notes that Unlimited Intimacy successfully showcases that the subject of "discomfort and risk" are themselves appropriate for academic analysis and that, despite going farther than any psychoanalyst would be comfortable in agreeing with, the work manages to be "artful because it has the capacity to make us nervous". It is expected by Ken Plummer in his review for Times Higher Education that the book will "infuriate many who work in the field of HIV prevention" and those in the LGBT community itself for focusing on a niche subculture that will potential enable homophobes in their attacks on the community. However, for Plummer, his concerns more revolve around the ethical claims made by Dean about barebacking and perceived intimacy and connections while thereby downplaying the health risks of the practice. Craig Hutchison in the journal Psychology & Sexuality admired the usage of psychoanalytic thought by Dean, specifically the return to its "radical roots" involved in the investigation of the "uncivilised and polymorphously perverse foundations of human emotion". This has resulted in a new look at the subject of HIV prevention and how the barebacking community fits into the discussion. Choice magazine's H.L. Minton said it was an "academically courageous book" and recommended it to graduate students and academic professionals. ==See also==