In the winter of 2020 the transgender science-fiction author Isabella Fall published a story that reimagined a pervasive transphobic internet quip—that one’s gender identity may be an attack helicopter—into an engrossing tale of a woman physically and mentally transformed into a multimillion-dollar piece of military hardware capable of providing close air support to ground troops and delivering antitank and antiair missiles. Fall’s story demonstrates how the most intimate aspects of ourselves—our gender, our sexuality, and our desires—are not necessarily liberatory but indeed malleable according to the dominant forces in our societies: economic systems and the states that govern us.
Two recent academic studies by Keti Chukhrov and Bogdan Popa pose a similar question, examining the role of Cold War ideology in shaping Western critical theory’s perspectives on the “libidinal economy,” desire, gender, and sexuality. Both authors seek to critically reexamine the dismissive attitude of leading Western social and critical theorists...
