Overview

Is queer theory dead? Through its increasing entanglement with capitalism, James Penney, controversially argues that queer theory has run its course. However, the 'end of queer' should not signal the death of liberatory sexual politics; rather, it presents the occasion to rethink the relation between sexuality and politics. The book makes a critical return to Marxism and psychoanalysis, via Freud and Lacan, and conducts a critical examination of queer theory's most famous proponents, including Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. In doing so, Penney insists that the way to implant sexuality in the field of political antagonism is - paradoxically - to abandon the exhausted premise of a politicised sexuality. He argues that by wresting sexuality from the dead end of identity politics, it can be opened up to a universal emancipatory struggle beyond the reach of capitalism's powers of commodification.

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Reviews

The audacious and sound thesis of Penney's new book - that the political as such is structured by sexuality - reties the knot between Freud and Marx in a way that exposes just how politically anemic theories of their pairing have become in recent years. Opting for an emancipatory rather than lifestyle politics, After Queer Theory wrests the anti-homophobic project from the grip of an at once hopelessly narrow and uselessly general queer theory. -- Joan Copjec, Brown University James Penney has done it again. As with his previous work, he is careful, in After Queer Theory, to explain his key theoretical terms and ground them in an informed and nuanced history of where the terms come from. Perhaps one of the most original (and intriguing) aspects of the project is his idea of the homosexual unconscious , which is worked out dialectically through reference to a multiplicity of urgent, current, socio-political events. He is correct to state that Queer Theory is now at a crucial turning point, when the only option is to undertake a radical and thorough critique of its presuppositions and present state. No other critics have undertaken such a project at the present time. -- Clive Thompson, School of Languages and Literatures, University of Guelph

The audacious and sound thesis of Penney's new book - that the political as such is structured by sexuality - reties the knot between Freud and Marx in a way that exposes just how politically anemic theories of their pairing have become in recent years. Opting for an emancipatory rather than lifestyle politics, After Queer Theory wrests the anti-homophobic project from the grip of an at once hopelessly narrow and uselessly general queer theory. -- Joan Copjec, Brown University James Penney has done it again. As with his previous work, he is careful , in After Queer Theory, to explain his key theoretical terms and ground them in an informed and nuanced history of where the terms come from. Perhaps one of the most original (and intriguing) aspects of the project is his idea of the homosexual unconscious , which is worked out dialectically through reference to a multiplicity of urgent, current, socio-political events. He is correct to state that Queer Theory is now at a crucial turning point, when the only option is to undertake a radical and thorough critique of its presuppositions and present state. No other critics have undertaken such a project at the present time. -- Clive Thompson, School of Languages and Literatures, University of Guelph

Author Information

James Penney teaches cultural theory at Trent University, Canada. He is the author of The Structures of Love (SUNY Press, 2012), and The World of Perversion (SUNY Press, 2006) and After Queer Theory (Pluto, 2013).

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