While the publication of Vivek Chibber's Postcolonial Theory and the
Spectre of Capital represents the latest iteration in a long-running
debate between Marxist and postcolonial theorists, it coincides with
the publication of major materialist critiques in feminist and queer
theory including Nancy Fraser's Fortunes of Feminism (Verso) and James
Penney's After Queer Theory (Pluto). This ...
(Show more)While the publication of Vivek Chibber's Postcolonial Theory and the
Spectre of Capital represents the latest iteration in a long-running
debate between Marxist and postcolonial theorists, it coincides with
the publication of major materialist critiques in feminist and queer
theory including Nancy Fraser's Fortunes of Feminism (Verso) and James
Penney's After Queer Theory (Pluto). This chapter begins by
considering what is at stake in the overarching debate between Marxism
and postcolonialism. It then explores how this debate has played
itself out in queer theory, where the main conceptual antagonists have
been Foucauldians and materialists (D'Emilio, Hennessy). Postcolonial
theory has intervened in queer scholarship relatively recently (Puar,
Gopinath, Hoad, Spurlin), but it has brought with it a
poststructuralist inheritance principally via the Deleuzian idea of
assemblage. The chapter will consider what has been gained and lost as
a result of this conjunction of theoretical influences. In particular,
it will ask whether assemblage analysis has detracted from, and
undermined, the precise identification and attack of homophobic
agency. In conclusion, the chapter will consider whether the
Marxist-postcolonial debate is premised on false oppositions, and will
ask what a queer postcolonial Marxism might look like.
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