After Queer Theory: The Limits of Sexual Politics

Is queer theory dead? Through its increasing entanglement with capitalism, James Penney, controversially argues that queer theory has run its course. However, the 'end of queer' should not signal the death of liberatory sexual politics; rather, it presents the occasion to rethink the relation between sexuality and politics. The book makes a critical return to Marxism and psychoanalysis, via Freud and Lacan, and conducts a critical examination of queer theory's most famous proponents, including Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. In doing so, Penney insists that the way to implant sexuality in the field of political antagonism is - paradoxically - to abandon the exhausted premise of a politicised sexuality. He argues that by wresting sexuality from the dead end of identity politics, it can be opened up to a universal emancipatory struggle beyond the reach of capitalism's powers of commodification.

Author: James Penney
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
Published: 11/08/2013
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.30w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780745333786

About the Author
James Penney teaches cultural theory at Trent University, Canada. He is the author of The Structures of Love: Art and Politics beyond the Transference (2012), and The World of Perversion: Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Absolute of Desire (2006).

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