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Revolutionary bodies traces a style of homoerotic writing in twentieth-century and contemporary Irish fiction. As this study demonstrates, writers in that tradition explored a broad spectrum of cultural and political concerns, while experimenting with the conventions of literary realism. We witness how, in these various works, the longing for the male body is insistently associated with utopian political desire. Developing a series of innovative readings, the argument proceeds through three author-centred chapters (Brendan Behan; John Broderick; Colm Tóibín) followed by two chapters on Irish gay fiction and ‘Celtic Tiger’ fiction. The latter two chapters focus on work by Keith Ridgway, Jamie O’Neill, Micheál Ó Conghaile and Barry McCrea, among others. Revolutionary Bodies prompts us to reconsider the relationship between aesthetics, literature and sexual liberation.
European Marxist and queer ideas, I drew on a materialist method to show how queer theory emerged in relation to Marxism-Leninism. I argued that a Marxist epistemology can offer queer theory not only a historical standpoint to understand its vocabulary, but also a new methodological orientation that is inspired by the world of eastern European socialism. Previous formulations of queer Marxism wanted to
conflict between the eastern European Marxist world and western liberal capitalism has been rarely touched upon. 9 These authors called for an increased attention to Marxism in queer studies, and gestured to a historicized view of the emergence of US categories for sexual and gender identities. Petrus Liu, in particular, advanced a Chinese queer Marxism that offered a distinctive analysis of systemic
In its contributions to the study of material social differences, queer theoretical writing has mostly assumed that any ideas which embody 'difference' are valuable. More than this, where it is invoked in contemporary theory, queerness is often imagined as synonymous with difference itself. This book uncovers an alternative history in queer cultural representation. Through engagement with works from a range of queer literary genres from across the long twentieth century – fin-de-siècle aestheticism, feminist speculative fiction, lesbian middle-brow writing, and the tradition of the stud file – the book elucidates a number of formal and thematic attachments to ideas that have been denigrated in queer theory for their embodiment of sameness: uselessness, normativity, reproduction and reductionism. Exploring attachments to these ideas in queer culture is also the occasion for a broader theoretical intervention: Same Old suggests, counterintuitively, that the aversion they inspire may be of a piece with how homosexuality has been denigrated in the modern West as a misguided orientation towards sameness. Combining queer cultural and literary history, sensitive close readings and detailed genealogies of theoretical concepts, Same Old encourages a fundamental rethinking of some of the defining positions in queer thought.
and Puar’s call, a revived Marxism is based on Althusser’s work, which, as Chukhrov reminds us, argued that communism is primarily not a structure, such as eastern European socialism, but a “process of critique and communization.” 84 Similarly, queer Marxism in Petrus Liu’s conceptualization seeks to synthesize Butler’s work and Marxist theory, but this attempt is based on
Rogozanu ( Cluj : Tact , 2012 ), pp. 76–83 ; and Boris Groys , Art Power ( Cambridge, MA : MIT Press , 2008 ), pp. 4–5 . 13 See Petrus Liu , Queer Marxism in Two Chinas ( Durham, NC : Duke
this chapter is – unlike theoretical accounts that maintain a Cold War split between eastern European Marxism and queer theory, such as Keti Chukhrov’s analysis – to underscore potential points of contact that could lead to a queer Marxism. 6 I explore the distinction between a project of political economy, which insisted on a mode of production based on needs (Soviet
Reification of Desire: towards a queer Marxism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), pp. 39–78. 25 Alan Sinfield, The Wilde Century (London: Cassell, 1994), pp. 2–3. 26 McKeon's fiction, including Solace (2011), which remains the most searching literary response to the 2008 crash, has
Mauconduit . Floyd , Kevin ( 2009 ), The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism , Minneapolis , University of Minnesota Press . Foucault , Michel ( 1978 ), The