Keywords
Cultural studies
Reification of the erotic
How to Cite
Abstract
The article situates the theoretical and methodological tensions of queer and Marxist perspectives in the context of the recent development of US capitalism. The material and ideological development of the Taylorist and Fordist forms (development of production technologies and stimulation of mass consumption) is directly related to the reification of the erotic, as the induction to consumption would have led to an unprecedented autonomy of sexual desire. The material basis of capitalist production is responsible for dissociating sexuality and gender and paves the way for the reification of the erotic by the class, overdetermining anti-heterosexist policies. However, there is a mutually productive and constitutive historical dialectic of the commodification of desire and its politicization. Reification is also a productive inflection, which must be thought of in a more dialectical and less functionalist way. In this sense, the article proposes that consumer culture can be read as a necessary and continuous point in modern history and the anti-heterosexist struggle.
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