The Specter of Materialism
Queer Theory and Marxism in the Age of the Beijing Consensus
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Duke University Press
Published:13th Jan '23
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£83.00(9781478016793)
In recent years, queer theory appears to have made a materialist turn away from questions of representation and performativity to those of dispossession, precarity, and the differential distribution of life chances. Despite this shift, queer theory finds itself constantly reabsorbed into the liberal project of diversity management. This theoretical and political weakness, Petrus Liu argues, stems from an incomplete understanding of capitalism’s contemporary transformations, of which China has been at the center. In The Specter of Materialism Liu challenges key premises of classic queer theory and Marxism, turning to an analysis of the Beijing Consensus—global capitalism’s latest mutation—to develop a new theory of the political economy of sexuality. Liu explores how relations of gender and sexuality get reconfigured to meet the needs of capital in new regimes of accumulation and dispossession, demonstrating that evolving US-Asian economic relations shape the emergence of new queer identities and academic theories. In so doing, he offers a new history of collective struggles that provides a transnational framework for understanding the nexus between queerness and material life.
"Petrus Liu’s The Specter of Materialism is intellectually courageous and theoretically sophisticated, advancing both queer theory and Marxist thought. This review has only scratched the surface of this paradigm-shifting work. Scholars of queer theory, gender and sexuality studies, Marxism, and China Studies will all find this book indispensable for their fields." -- Wenqing Kang * Modern Chinese Literature And Culture *
"The Specter of Materialism is a major intervention into its announced three arenas of inquiry: queer theory, Marxism, and China. ...The product of many years of thinking and refining, Liu here extends the inquiry into asking and answering two questions: why does queer theory in China and elsewhere need Marxism, and why does Marxism need queer theory and China? These, as he shows, are intertwined problems of a global materialist history of capitalism that haunt our present, and they are problems of how to think from China about the world we currently inhabit. ... We would do well to follow Liu’s lead." -- Rebecca Karl * Chinese Literature *
"Petrus Liu’s work constitutes an indispensable force in both queer studies and Chinese studies." -- Flair Donglai Shi * Asian Studies Review *
"Together with his previous book Queer Marxism in Two Chinas, Petrus Liu’s The Specter of Materialism makes a major and invaluable contribution to creating a truly global queer Marxism. . . . Queer Marxists have a lot to learn from Liu about China’s central place in the spheres of geopolitics, economics, gender and sexuality. At the same time, queer Marxists will enthusiastically welcome his insistence that queer studies need to be far more materialist." -- Peter Drucker * Dialogues in Human Geography *
"A groundbreaking work. . . . This book offers insightful interventions that carry substantial significance." -- Charlie Yi Zhang * Journal of Asian Studies *
ISBN: 9781478019428
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 386g
256 pages