Buy New

$25.00

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

This item ships to France. Want it Tuesday, July 3? Order within and choose AmazonGlobal Priority Shipping at checkout. Learn more

Select delivery location

Buy Used

$18.57

+ $3.99 shipping

Select delivery location

Used: Acceptable | Details

Sold by TTPDC

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Add to Cart

$21.00
+ $31.30 shipping

Sold by: allnewbooks

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 3 images

The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism Paperback – July 3, 2009

by Kevin Floyd (Author)

2 customer reviews

See all 6 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$18.24

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$75.00

$55.00

$24.95

Paperback

"Please retry"

$25.00

$21.00

$18.57

The Reification of Desire takes two critical perspectives rarely analyzed together—formative arguments for Marxism and those that have been the basis for queer theory—and productively scrutinizes these ideas both with and against each other to put forth a new theoretical connection between Marxism and queer studies.

Kevin Floyd brings queer critique to bear on the Marxian categories of reification and totality and considers the dialectic that frames the work of Georg Lukács, Herbert Marcuse, and Fredric Jameson. Reading the work of these theorists together with influential queer work by such figures as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, and alongside reconsiderations of such texts as The Sun Also Rises and Midnight Cowboy, Floyd reformulates these two central categories that have been inseparable from a key strand of Marxist thought and have marked both its explanatory power and its limitations. Floyd theorizes a dissociation of sexuality from gender at the beginning of the twentieth century in terms of reification to claim that this dissociation is one aspect of a larger dynamic of social reification enforced by capitalism.

Developing a queer examination of reification and totality, Kevin Floyd ultimately argues that the insights of queer theory require a fundamental rethinking of both.

Frequently bought together

Total price: $92.87

These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Show details

Buy the selected items together

This item:The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism by Kevin Floyd Paperback $25.00
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping. Details
Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism by Rosemary Hennessy Paperback $55.22
Only 2 left in stock - order soon.
Sold by ayvax and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.
FREE Shipping. Details
The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction by Michel Foucault Paperback $12.65
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Rosemary Hennessy

1

Paperback
$55.22
Roderick A. Ferguson

4

Paperback
$16.00
Judith Butler

44

Paperback
$22.65
José Esteban Muñoz

9

Paperback
$19.40
Michel Foucault

89

Paperback
$12.65
Lee Edelman

7

Paperback
$18.80

Special offers and product promotions

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kevin Floyd is associate professor of English at Kent State University.

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (June 12, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0816643962
ISBN-13: 978-0816643967
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 2 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #968,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1558 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Communism & Socialism
- #1722 in Books > Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Books > LGBT Studies
- #2928 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Political

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

If you buy a new print edition of this book (or purchased one in the past), you can buy the Kindle edition for only $2.99 (Save 85%). Print edition purchase must be sold by Amazon. .

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars

5 star

4 star (0%)

3 star (0%)

2 star (0%)

1 star (0%)

Write a customer review

See all 2 customer reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

tamiii

Toward Queer Marxism

February 18, 2010

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

In his book, Global Sex, Dennis Altman complains that his students of queer theory fail to appreciate the historical circumstances which the theories that they study were intended to explain. Here, Floyd cannot be said to be guilty of this sin. Capitalism creates abstractions which take on a seeming reality all their own, a process Lukacs called 'reification.' However, these ideas are inseparable from the particular historical and social soil from which they were grown. Floyd deftly elaborates how movies like Midnight Cowboy can be understood within the context of a post-Depression regulatory impulse known as Fordism, an intentional policy of engendering consumption in a somewhat vain attempt to stabilize capitalism's relentless and anarchic accumulation of productive capacity. Floyd further analyzes how ascendant financial capital has supplanted the strategy of Fordism with a vicious neoliberalism which simply steals the little space which Fordism permitted queer communities. Those interested in this approach might also read Rosemary Hennessy's Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism.

While Floyd's book is tight, thoughtful, and arrestingly clear for an academic work, he seeks to merge queer theory with marxism rather than place queer theory within marxism. The result is bleak. It reminds me of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories--a tiny queer population scattered by a rising brutal militarism. Lost is the brilliant innovation which those original Communists brought to the American Gay Movement when the Mattachine Society was first formed. There, three men rethought Lenin's priniciple of the right of self-determination for oppressed people and applied it to homosexual men, treating them as if they were an oppressed nationality. Implicit in this tactic was the recognition that queer survival is intimately intertwined with the survival of working people as a whole.

Perhaps a few months ago, a friend and I were lamenting the lack of interest among local California gay organizations in the fight for single payer national health care, a central issue to working people in the United States, and a primary concern of union members--and plainly a concern to anyone who is HIV positive. These organizations were focussed on gay marriage. No one can say these things for sure but it is probably the case that today in Massachusetts the number of gay men who have decided to marry is probably little different than the number who are HIV positive--both small minorities within a small minority. Yet, one issue offers the possibility of joining in coalition with larger class forces; the other, though 'assimilationist' does not.

I am grateful for Floyd's book and recommend it to anyone who is interested in queer theory--if only for his brief insightful critique of Foucault and Butler. Yet, I still look forward to the day when the descendants of the founders of the Mattachine Society return to their roots.

20 people found this helpful

Comment

January 19, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Great book.

Helpful

Not Helpful

Comment

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism

Set up a giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Rosemary Hennessy

1

Paperback
$55.22
Judith Butler

44

Paperback
$22.65
Holly Lewis

3

Paperback
$27.69
José Esteban Muñoz

9

Paperback
$19.40
Michel Foucault

89

Paperback
$12.65
Jasbir Puar

6

Paperback
$27.95

Buy New

$25.00

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Buy Used

$18.57

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Other Sellers on Amazon

The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism Paperback – July 3, 2009

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Special offers and product promotions

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Customer Reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Buy New $25.00

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Buy Used $18.57

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Other Sellers on Amazon

The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism Paperback – July 3, 2009

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Special offers and product promotions

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Sponsored products related to this item (What's this?)

Customer Reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Buy New

$25.00

Buy Used

$18.57