Additional Information
Book Details
Abstract
The Politics of Everybody examines the production and maintenance of the terms 'man', 'woman', and 'other' within the current political moment; the contradictions of these categories and the prospects of a Marxist approach to praxis for queer bodies. Few thinkers have attempted to reconcile queer and Marxist analysis. Those who have propose the key contested site to be that of desire/sexual expression. This emphasis on desire, Lewis argues, is symptomatic of the neoliberal project and has led to a continued fascination with the politics of identity. By arguing that Marxist analysis is in fact most beneficial to gender politics within the arena of body production, categorization and exclusion Lewis develops a theory of gender and the sexed body that is wedded to the realities of a capitalist political economy.
Boldly calling for a new, materialist queer theory, Lewis defines a politics of liberation that is both intersectional, transnational, and grounded in lived experience.
‘Like a breath of air from some enlightened future, this book will invigorate and inspire all readers looking for a fresh alternative to the smugly inward theoreticism of so much contemporary feminism and queer theory, advancing by leaps and bounds a conversation that has struggled to emerge for far too long.’
James Penney, Trent University
‘Asks incisive questions about the relationship between the universal and the particular, between sex and gender, and sameness and difference. In so doing she rejects both an economistic reading of macro processes and an individuated reading of relations at the micro level. Ultimately it is a provocative book: for it provokes both thought and action.’
Tithi Bhattacharya, Purdue University
'[A] thought provoking and original text.'
Critical Social Policy
‘At a time when Marxist politics is struggling more than
ever against the current, queer Marxist scholarship is enjoying a slight,
startling, heartening resurgence. Holly Lewis’ The Politics of Everybody
is a major contribution to the trend.’
Europe Solidare Sans Frontières
Holly Lewis is an assistant professor of philosophy at Texas State University, where she teaches continental philosophy, aesthetics, and political philosophy. She holds a PhD from the European Graduate School, as well as a masters from the University of Pennsylvania, where her research focused on US and Latin American studies with an emphasis on women and gender.
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cover | Cover | ||
| Half Title | i | ||
| About the Author | ii | ||
| Title | iii | ||
| Copyright | iv | ||
| Contents | v | ||
| Acknowledgements | xi | ||
| Introduction | 1 | ||
| I. The Politics of Everybody \r | 1 | ||
| II. Communitarian Ideals and Culture Wars \r | 8 | ||
| III. How Is Every Body Sorted? \r | 12 | ||
| 1. Terms of the Debate | 17 | ||
| I. Debates in Western Gender Politics | 18 | ||
| Epistemology and Identity Politics | 18 | ||
| Queer (anti-)identity | 25 | ||
| Sex and Social Gender: Dichotomy or Dialectic? | 30 | ||
| A Final Word on Queer Language | 33 | ||
| II. What Is Capitalism? \r | 35 | ||
| The Origins of Capitalism | 36 | ||
| The Basics of Capitalist Exchange | 40 | ||
| The Extraction of Surplus Value | 42 | ||
| III. Philosophy and the Marxian Roots of Queer Political Thought \r | 46 | ||
| Marx and Philosophy | 47 | ||
| Epistemology Revisited | 51 | ||
| Changing Words or Changing Worlds? | 55 | ||
| The Separation of Politics and Economics | 60 | ||
| From Western Marxism to Poststructuralism | 64 | ||
| IV. Conclusion \r | 88 | ||
| 2. Marxism and Gender | 93 | ||
| I. Don’t Be Vulgar … \r | 93 | ||
| II. from the Woman Question to the Gender Question \r | 102 | ||
| III. Marxism at the Center and the Periphery \r | 105 | ||
| IV. Marx on Women \r | 110 | ||
| V. Marx on Gender and Labor | 113 | ||
| VI. the Major Works: Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks and Engels’ the Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State | 121 | ||
| VII. Early Marxist and Socialist Feminism \r | 125 | ||
| Who Is the Woman in the Woman Question? | 125 | ||
| Sex and the Utopian Socialists | 132 | ||
| Sex and the Second International | 135 | ||
| Sex and the Russian Revolution | 139 | ||
| VIII. Theories of Social Reproduction \r | 143 | ||
| IX. Race and Social Reproduction \r | 155 | ||
| X. Marxism and the Second Wave | 166 | ||
| 3. From Queer Nationalism to Queer Marxism | 187 | ||
| I. The Vector Model of Oppression \r | 187 | ||
| II. Racecraft and Ideological Repetition \r | 196 | ||
| III. Sexcraft and Ideological Repetition \r | 198 | ||
| IV. Class Is Not a Moral Category \r | 201 | ||
| V. The Rise of Queer Politics \r | 203 | ||
| VI. Marxist Critiques of Queer Theory \r | 212 | ||
| VII. Beyond Homonormativity and Homonationalism \r | 222 | ||
| VIII. The Spinning Compass of American Queer Politics \r | 230 | ||
| The Problem of Marriage and Family | 230 | ||
| The Problem of Queer Imperialism | 238 | ||
| IX. The World Is a Very Queer Place \r | 245 | ||
| X. The Queer Marxist Critique of Postcolonialism \r | 247 | ||
| 4. Conclusions | 257 | ||
| I. Solidarity Means Taking Sides | 257 | ||
| Solidarity and Ideologies of Sex/gender | 264 | ||
| II. Ten Axioms Towards a Queer Marxist Future \r | 270 | ||
| Notes | 283 | ||
| Bibliography | 311 | ||
| Index | 327 |