Introduction: Toward a marxian sexual politics

The three essays in this volume all agree that the intersection between queer theory and Marxism constitutes a productive field for theorizing sexual politics. Rosemary Hennessy’s article argues that capitalism produces human affect and human need that get bound up with various forms of identity, made fungible both within and outside the workplace. She focuses on a case study to show how sexual identities have been instrumentalized to extract additional surplus value from the maquiladora system. Kevin Floyd shows that Lukacs’s misreading of Marx led him to condemn sexuality, because it involves objectifying another human being as a means to an end. Marcia Klotz argues that Marx’s critique of alienation, as it applies to labor, could be fruitfully applied to sexuality as well.