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Towards a Gay Communism

Towards a Gay Communism

Mario Mieli

(2018)

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Book Details

Abstract

First published in Italian in 1977, Mario Mieli's groundbreaking book is an early landmark of revolutionary queer theory - now available for the first time in a complete and unabridged English translation.

Among the most important works ever to address the relationship between homosexuality, homophobia and capitalism, Mieli's essay continues to pose a radical challenge to today's dominant queer theory and politics.

With extraordinary prescience, Mieli exposes the efficiency with which capitalism co-opts 'perversions' which are then 'sold both wholesale and retail'. In his view the liberation of homosexual desire requires the emancipation of sexuality from both patriarchal sex roles and capital.

Drawing heavily upon Marx and psychoanalysis to arrive at a dazzlingly original vision, Towards a Gay Communism is a hitherto neglected classic that will be essential reading for all who seek to understand the true meaning of sexual liberation under capitalism today.
'Mieli was ahead of his time... Towards a Gay Communism belongs to a visionary tradition of ecstatic utopianism... A fascinating document of its departed moment, but also as renewable inspiration for our contemporary desire to envision a future that is foreign to today'
Tim Dean
'An indispensable, pioneering example of the long, difficult effort to articulate queer struggle with anti-capitalist struggle'
Kevin Floyd, author of The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism (University of Minnesota Press, 2009)
'A just and timely tribute to one of theory’s forgotten stars'
TANK

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Cover Cover
Contents v
Foreword: 'I Keep My Treasure in My Arse' - Tim Dean vi
Introduction - Massimo Prearo xv
Translator's Preface - Evan Calder Williams xxv
Preface xxxvi
1. Homosexual Desire is Universal 1
2. Fire and Brimstone, or How Homosexuals Became Gay 55
3. Heterosexual Men, or Rather Closet Queens 110
4. Crime and Punishment 158
5. A Healthy Mind in a Perverse Body 179
6. Towards a Gay Communism 208
8. The End 253
Appendix A: Unpublished Preface to 'Homosexuality and Liberation' - Mario Mieli (1980) 257
Appendix B: Translator's Additional Note from Chapter 1 258
Index 261