Queerness, Norms, Utopia

Extending the recent rapprochement among queer studies, Marxist theory, and political economy, this special issue of GLQ responds to the current crisis of capitalism. Contributors consider how methodologies of queer studies are specially poised to reveal the global, historical, and social dimensions of capitalist economic relations. Using queer hermeneutical tools in combination with globalization studies, secularization studies, and queer of color critique, contributors examine global economic history and the ideological collusion of capitalist production and biological reproduction. The Introduction explores the ways in which capitalism is only made possible by systems of racial, sexual, and national exploitation; further, we seek to interrupt the commonsensical presumption that recuperation from periods of crisis depends on the increasingly violent reassertion of these forms of exploitation. Turning our attention to the set of crises defining the period we understand as neoliberal capitalism—the long wave of recessions and dispossessions stretching from the 1970s to the present—we explore the shared queer and Marxist commitment to concepts of utopia and theories of totality as frameworks for strenuously negating and moving beyond current conditions. By providing an expansive theoretical perspective on current and historical economic patterns, we hope to illuminate and advance our understanding of the complex structures of global capitalism.