“Ricco's close investigation of the non-relation aspects of relationality—the manner in which we do not come together—is . . . a crucial intervention into the aesthetic and ethical impasse that is ever-present in discussions of art after the participatory turn. . . . Ricco shows that the promise of a truly relational practice lies in maintaining a shared space that we do not stand apart from or in judgment of, but that we enter into separately with each and every encounter.”

Art in America

“Ricco’s book offers an insightful, at times brilliant, interpretive framework that challenges many of contemporary art’s current orthodoxies.”

Critical Inquiry

“Ricco’s engagement with Nancy’s writings on art and the body is detailed and wide-ranging. . . . Ricco’s overwhelming concern is to develop, through works of art, another thinking of relation beyond sameness and difference, to trace another space of sharing, and as such is of real value to the thinking of queer sociality to come.”

parallax

“Extraordinary and beautifully composed. . . . Ranging in examples from Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Breillat, to Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Jean Genet, Marguerite Duras and (most magnificently) Roland Barthes, Ricco carefully traces the various performances of unbecoming through which existence occurs in the interstices of (in)decisions. . . . Among the various illuminating moves in Ricco’s book is its immersion in the various environments it evokes and theorises, at once setting up scenes while at the same time distancing the reader from them, page after page.”

New Formations

“Through a compelling, lucid, and wonderfully suggestive reading of Nancy’s writings, we are exposed throughout The Decision Between Us to numerous scenes of seduction and abandoned existence, scenes at once erotic and funerary, intimate and desolate. An incisive contribution to the ways in which Nancy’s writings might be read today, the sense of sharing at the heart of the argument is both transformative and intensely ethical.”

Philip Armstrong, Ohio State University

“Ricco’s The Decision Between Us is a beautifully executed book on the execution and extension of being-in-relation. Its articulation of sexuality theory, deconstructive philosophy, and queer art opens up different idioms to each other the way lovers open to each other—excitedly, productively, and yet always enigmatically, pointing beyond what seems present. Ricco is also a brilliant close reader. An enrapturing read.”

Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago

“Reopening ground broken by Jean-Luc Nancy, The Decision Between Us traces the paradoxes of relational being across a range of artistic, literary, and philosophical ‘scenes.’ Through a series of startling juxtapositions, Ricco weaves together scenes of exposure, erasure, and unmaking to reveal the inseparability of aesthetics from ethics.  This is an original and challenging work by one of our most brilliant philosophers of visuality.”

Tim Dean, author of Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking