Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism
16/06/2015
Often, the cultural differences that shape how identities are organized as they are are left unexamined, and the relationship between sexual identities and capitalism remains for the most part an unexplored—even unspeakable—area of inquiry. Against this trend, I begin with the assumption that the history of sexual identity—in all of the varied ways it has been culturally differentiated and lived—has been fundamentally, though never simply, affected by several aspects of capitalism. I give some extended attention to concepts (late capitalism, gendered divisions of labor, ideology, patriarchal structures) that may not seem to be related to sexual identity in any obvious way. I invite the reader to be patient with these seeming detours. I offer them because I hope they will serve as interventions into the power of more obvious and perhaps more compelling ways of seeing.
