The Material Queer: A Lesbigay Cultural Studies Reader (Queer Critique)

Rating:
Summary: An excellent overview of queer materialism
Review: This book is controversial, to say the least. Perusing the table of contents reveals that many of the essays Morton wanted to include were denied permission to reprint. Be that as it may, this volume is nonetheless useful. It documents a growing movement within queer studies, that of Queer Materialism.

Queer Materialism, while not always Marxist, nonetheless takes its cue from dialectical materialism. Gender and sexuality are regarded here as dependent on the means of production. Here the unstable and shifting ground of queer sexual identity is posited as a function of late capitalism, a situtation of quickly flowing and networking capital, which seeks profit outside of "traditional" gender and sexual boundaries. Thus we see the growing economic importance of gay consumers and workers in capitalism, outpacing and destroying the cold-war hegemony of conservative ethical and religious morals.

At the same time, this points to the stormy reception queer theory has recieved in lesbigay studies. Some have argued that this deconstruction of sexual orientation and gender serves the political interests of the right-wing, preserving male and heterosexist hegemony while undermining women's voices and progressive politics. Queer theory, like bisexuals, can pose a "crisis of meaning" for many who wish to carve out a safe and protective space for lesbigays.

As LesBiGay studies have often relied on sexual orientation/sexual identity as a fundamental category, queer theory attempts to destablize this "bedrock," revealing the power structures and discursive limits within. Because of its emphasis on captalism (from a Marxist perspective to be sure) and its deconstrucitve tactics, queer theory is thus attacked from the left and the right.

Essayists in this work decry the presence of essentialism and idealism in Lesbigay culture, as well as their child, "identity politics". What remains unclear, and unanswered, in my opinion, is the fate of queer individuals after the utopian moment of Marxist revolution.

If queer individuals are a product of capitalism---then does that mean that the end of capitalism would bring stable and firm gender and sexual identities? What about intersexed individuals and transsexual/transgendered people? Will they somehow not exist? What would gender roles be like in a post-capitalist world? Would "stable" identiites be a good thing? What or whose interests would that serve?

Well, these are of course speculative questions, but ones that queer materialism must answer to eventually. Until then, this reader is a good place to start reading and getting to know this subset of queer studies.