Party ‘n’ Play Online hook-up devices and the emergence of PNP practices among gay men Kane Race Department of Gender & Cultural Studies University of Sydney, Australia

The renunciative turn Popular discourses increasingly pin HIV preventionas a possibility that relies on the renunciation of substance use (and sometimes even casual sex!) To counter this, we need engaged analyses of sex/drug cultures so that the possibilities of safety/care that are immanent within these cultures can be identified and fostered

Online hookup sites/apps/locative devices A new(ish) infrastructure of the sexual encounter If institutions allocate resources and establish hierarchies of authority Infrastructures produce capacities and shape encounters in ways that become more or less durable components of everyday routines

Party and Play (“PNP”) Also known as ”partying”, “wired play”, “chem sex”, “extended sessions” At home; arranged online; involving one or more partners over extended period of time; use of psychoactive substances (typically crystal meth, smoked, GHB); pornography; etc. - a specifically assembled erotic environment. About 15% - 20% of Sydney gay men had participated in PNP in last 6 months Approached as a pathogenic site by public health literature Also a site for the elaboration of specific affective associations

2004 community ed poster NYC

In social/political theory, the technological object/commodity is typically positioned as responsible for the demise of sociality, community, politics, etc. An alternative approach asks “How do objects/devices mediate sociality?” (Object-oriented process studies)

Sex as play “Looking to play?” Georg Simmel, “The sociology of sociability” ([1910] 1949) – role of play-form in the making of sociability Bruno Latour’s “associology”- challenges the notion that “society” or “community” explains anything – rather these formations need to be explained, by tracing their assemblage.

Distinctive features/formations Pre-specification of practices and desires Co-construction of fantasy/ erotic speculation Wired play/ extended sessions

Serosorting

The emergence of undetectable identity

Sexual speculation

Generative encounters “the crystallization of their fantasies in the texts that constitute the vehicle for their interaction is akin to the joint construction of a script” (P. Adam et al. 2011: 507). N.B Here desires, intentions and even identities do not precede the online encounter in any simple sense, but can be understood to emerge from it through a process of eventuation. (On eventuation see Race, “Complex events”, forthcoming this year in Contemporary Drug Problems)

Group play/ extended sessions

What are some implications for HIV prevention and education? Requires a different form of health education than that which addresses itself to the sovereign, intentional, calculative, rational-choice actor. It becomes impossible to classify any individual element in a sexual assemblage as good or bad since their properties are emergent What matters is the manner in which various different elements come together in an assemblage to generate specific effects (whether good or bad) – and it is this coming together that requires specific attention and vigilance. A training in potentialities (both promising and dangerous) – what I call “speculative pragmatism” Promoting this mode of attention might become the goal of a new form of sexual health and drug education.

Acknowledgements This research has been supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, “Changing Spaces of HIV Prevention” DP120101990. Thanks to the community of informants who have shared their experiences and impressions of changes to sexual community and gay sexual culture. Article based on this paper forthcoming this year in Sexualities Two related pieces forthcoming in Contemporary Drug Problems and Culture, Health & Sexuality.