CFP HM Sexuality and Political Economy Network (HMSPEN)
Marxism, Sexuality and Political Economy: Looking Forwards, Looking Backwards
Stream at the Historical Materialism Annual Conference, Central London, 9-12 November 2017
Deadline 15 May 2017: http://conference.historicalmaterialism.org/index.php/hmlondon/annual14
The Sexuality and Political Economy network (HMSPEN), affiliated to Historical Materialism (HM), invite paper/panel proposals for a stream of panels at HM London 2017 on the theme of Marxism, Sexuality and Political Economy: Looking Forwards, Looking Backwards
After an initial launch last year with 6 successful panels, HMSPEN once again seeks to run a themed panel through HM London 2017, to be held on the 9th-12th November 2017.
Whilst we welcome any papers and panels that illuminate, debate and develop the relationmship between Marxism, sexuality and political economy, whether theoretical, analytical or empirical, from any disciplines or trans-disciplinary, we are particularly seeking paper and panel proposals on the theme of ‘looking forwards, looking backwards’.
The 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution reminds us that there is a rich corpus of insight and vision from past Marxist scholarship and politics to complement the more recent explosion of high quality scholarship and political synergies between Marxism and the radical critiques and politics of sexuality. We want to celebrate this moment by seeking papers clustered around the following questions:
• What can we useful retrieve from the past in respect of sexuality and gender scholarship that will add to present debates? Have we adequately used the insights of Engels, Kollontai, Reich, D’Emilio and Marcuse amongst others? Are there other thinkers we have neglected to our cost – Armand, Zetkin. Mieli, Reiche, and Brown?
• Have we learned the lessons of history in respect of the radical politics of sexuality? Are there still lessons to be learned from Soviet Communism and the politics of sexuality or the radicalism of the late 1960’s from Stonewall to the Gay left Collective?
• With a recent wave of critical scholarship intersecting Marxism and sexuality (Drucker, Lewis, Sears, Hennessy, Floyd amongst others), where does that leave us in developing a critical theory and politics that retains a Marxist approach but adequately incorporates and learns from radical critiques of sexuality, whether LGBTQI or queer theory or sexual worker critiques?
• How do we translate recent developments on critical theoretical intersections between Marxism and sexuality into a distinctive strategic approach to sexual politics today?
• How should we understand and theorise the continuities/discontinuities, both historical and theoretical, between social and sexual revolutions
Papers are sought that explore those themes and enrich our understanding of the political economy of sexuality from a Marxist perspective. At the same time, this does not preclude submissions along a range of additional and complementary themes:
• Commodification, Consumption and Sexual Space
• Commodification, Consumption and Homonormativity in neo-Liberal Contexts
• The Market, Capitalism and Sexual Rights and Justice
• Queer Labour, Queer Capital
• Marxism, sexuality studies, feminism and political economy
• Queer Intersections and political economy
• Sexual political economy in global contexts
• The political economy of trans and intersex
• Capitalism, class and the terms of queer resistance
• Sexual dimensions of gendered capitalism as a mode of social
production and reproduction
• Imperialist and Colonial interventions, Islamophobia, homonationalism and
pinkwashing
• the sexual dynamics of capitalist restoration in China
• Globalising the dialogues between Sexuality, political economy and Marxism
Paper should be submitted to the HM conference website in the normal fashion but clearly marked in the submission title MSPEN in order to be considered for these panels.
