On Twinkpocalypse

This essay examines the gay twink as a figure that exhibits apocalyptic tendencies. The Oxford English Dictionary defines apocalypse as “a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; a cataclysm.” It also points a finger to the religious connotation of the word, “the Second Coming of Christ and ultimate destruction of the world.” To this extent, apocalypse seems to be incompatible with a dominant strand of queer theory that emphasizes José Esteban Muñoz's “world-making properties of queerness.” If the central project of queerness is to “dream and enact new and better pleasures,” as Muñoz prescribes, and to forge “other ways of being in the world, and ultimately create new worlds,” then the idea of apocalypse militates against such world-making and meaning-making enterprise of queerness. Placing twink beside apocalypse, this essay asks, what can queer theory learn from the figure of the twink? And, in proposing twinkpocalypse as a concept, the author asks, what is apocalyptic about twinks, and what is twinkish about apocalypse?