Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism - Softcover

Hennessy, Rosemary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 041592426X ISBN 13: 9780415924269

Publisher: Routledge, 2000

Synopsis

In Profit and Pleasure , Rosemary Hennessy develops a new understanding of sexual identities as they are linked to lived material realities, capitalism in particular. She points out that sexual identities have always been linked to gender, race, and nationality but these 'identities' themselves are inevitably linked to the structures of capitalism. Hennessy argues that as our world, and the United States in particular, changes, becoming more transnational and global in scope, sexual identities are also changing with it. From this exploration, she further examines the ways that these new identities have led to new forms of commodification of identity as well as the role of sexuality in achieving collective agency for social transformation.

About this title

Review:

"This book is a must. It focuses on a highly contested terrain: the production of desire. But it never falls into the trap of just following a fashion; unlike many other books, it wants to be useful to its readers, wants to give women more capacity of action by showing how to intervene into the conditions of their lives."
-Frigga Haug, author of "Female Sexualization and Beyond Female Masochism
"A must-read. Hennessy gives us a brilliant new Marxist feminist analysis of the commodification of culture in global capitalism and the creation and management of sexual identities. Her historical approach uncovers problems not only with classical identity politics but also with postmodern queer theory and politics with incisive criticisms of Althusser, Williams, Butler and De Lauretis. Unlike some books which do not connect to practice, she sketches a radical collective politics that provides a plausible alternative to the theories she critiques."
-Ann Ferguson, University of Massachusetts
"Hennessy demonstrates lucidly and persuasively the indispensability of the Marxist tradition both to an understanding of how sexuality is organized by the capitalist drive for profit and to the formulation of a radical sexual politics."
-Barbara Foley, Rutgers University, author of "Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929-1941
"Countering the 'localisms' of contemporary queer theory with a materialist feminist analytic, Rosemary Hennessy offers the first book length statement on the political economy of homosexuality. Even readers resistant to her commitments and conclusions will find "Profit "and Pleasure a necessary tool in rethinking the intimaciesbetween capitalism and sex."
-Robyn Wiegman, Director, Women's Studies, University of California, Irvine

About the Author:

Rosemary Hennessy is Associate Professor of English at the University of Albany, SUNY. She is the author of Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (Routledge, 1993) and the co-editor of Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives (Routledge, 1997).

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 041592426X
• ISBN 13: 9780415924269
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280