Forthcoming from Duke University Press, The Specter of Materialism: Queer Theory and Marxism in the Age of the Beijing Consensus by Petrus Liu (Associate Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Boston University), is another fascinating study that we have recently indexed at Southwest Humanities. In this book, Liu argues that recent queer theory, in spite of the shift it has made from themes like performativity and representation to more materialist questions of precarity and dispossession, it “finds itself constantly reabsorbed into the liberal project of diversity management.” According to Liu, this “stems from an incomplete understanding of capitalism’s contemporary transformations, of which China has been at the center.” Thus, The Specter of Materialism interrogates central tenets of classic queer theory as well as Marxism “to develop a new theory of the political economy of sexuality.” Liu’s book is scheduled to be published on January 13, 2023. More information can be found at the publisher’s website here.
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