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Sexuality, subjectivity … and political economy?

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Abstract

This article argues that the relationship between sexuality and political economy remains elusive to the extent that fantasy is under-theorized. Queer and feminist theorists of this relationship provide accounts that assume we have moved away from kinship formations and towards new intimacies within late capitalism, yet continue to pay exclusive attention to ‘gay and lesbian’ subjects as the litmus test of sexual inequality. Debates about how far such subjects remain marginal (and in need of recognition), or have become co-opted (through commodification and reification) misses the ways in which kinship structures are not only an empirical issue. Reading Lauren Berlant and Teresa de Lauretis together, this article re-examines their arguments about the importance of ongoing and complex attachments to the familial, and proposes interdisciplinary ways of considering the relationship between sexuality and political economy otherwise.

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Notes

  1. See Paul Boyce's work for an exploration of the ahistoricism of such approaches, that curious forget colonial influences as they seek to recover an alternative sexual paradigm (Boyce, 2006).

  2. This trajectory has a venerable history, drawing on and extending Marxist feminist arguments that illuminate the function of ‘the sexual sphere’ as underwriting economic exchange (Rubin, 1975; Pateman, 1988; Wittig, 1992 [1980]), and Marxist and psychoanalytic arguments about the radical significance of homosexuality in challenging consumerism and capitalist drudgery (Marcuse, 1955; Hocquenghem, 1993 [1972]).

  3. Direct citation of both authors will follow in the main body of the text.

  4. Merck (2004) considers Fraser to have carried the day; Lisa Adkins (2002) errs on the Butler side in her critique of the visibility politics of ‘recognition’, and Anna Marie Smith (2001) takes both to task for their ahistoricism in relation to the kinship/economy interface.

  5. I detect an early anxiety about this in Rosemary Hennessy's critique of the ‘queer theory’ special issue of Differences (De Lauretis, 1991), where she expresses concern about the lack of attention to what makes ‘queerness’ possible, as well as the ‘who’ of an emergent deconstructive ethical and political high ground (Hennessy, 1993).

  6. Lynne Segal (2008) traces the development of Butler's thought concerning identity, contextualizing changes as to do with an increased concern with ‘the political’ over ‘the performative’. I am more convinced by Kaye Mitchell's response to Segal that changes primarily concern the political life of performatives rather than a prioritization of the former (Mitchell, 2008).

  7. Berlant's 2007a essay is republished in Cruel Optimism (2011, pp. 161–189).

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Rutvica Andrijasevic, Laleh Khalili and the reviewers and editors at Subjectivity for their exceptionally helpful comments on a early draft of this piece.

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  1. Gender Institute, LSE, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK

    Clare Hemmings

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Hemmings, C. Sexuality, subjectivity … and political economy?. Subjectivity 5, 121–139 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2012.9

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