Is there such a thing as a ‘queer radical tradition?’ And what is the relationship between queerness and Marxism?
Alex Stoffel joins us to discuss his new book Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States.
This talk reconsiders the history of radical queer politics since 1968. Against common framings of queer politics as either a progressive campaign for state recognition or as a subcultural rejection of prevailing gender norms, it provides an alternative view of queer radicalism that clarifies its true scale. Revisiting the gay liberation movement, Black lesbian feminism, and AIDS activism, it explores the relationship between struggles for sexual freedom and questions of capital accumulation, empire, and state violence. The queer radical tradition is shown to have not only conditioned the trajectory of LGBTI history, but also to have radicalized wider anti-imperialist, socialist, and abolitionist struggles past and present.
Dr. Alex Stoffel is an Assistant Professor in International Politics at Queen Mary University of London. His research takes up critical questions regarding the intersections of sexuality, race, and desire within capitalist expansion. He has published in, among other journals, International Studies Quarterly, The European Journal of International Relations, The International Feminist Journal of Politics, and Salvage and is an editor of the journal Historical Materialism, where he convenes the Sexuality and Political Economy Network.
Response will be given by Tulio Bucchioni, PhD candidate in LAIC/ICLS/ISSG. This event is cosponsored by the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and the Research Initiative in the Global Histories of Sexualities.
