Theorising LGBTQI* Politics in Global Capitalism: queer/trans Marxist contributions

For some years now, queer and trans studies have been witnessing a new theoretical engagement with Marx and Western Marxism to explain queer- and trans-specific economic inequalities and the persistence or even increase of anti-queer and anti-trans violence in times of capitalist crises. In this context, there are increasing attempts to think queer/trans and class theoretical perspectives together in order to explore potentials of an LGBTIQ* class politics that seeks to overcome social relations of dominance and violence in globalised capitalism. This talk relates to these current discussions and contours three levels on which among others a queer Marxism contributes to this project: 1. in terms of a queer-intersectional notion of class that theorizes LGBTI*Q positionings as reinforcers of dominance, exploitation, and the exclusion from social property. 2. in terms of analyses of sexual and gender relations as the object or terrain of class-constituting contestations in crises-driven times. 3. in terms of mobilising queerness as a disruptive factor and killjoy (Sara Ahmed), which on the one hand counteracts a homogenization and closure of class concepts and on the other hand preserves a right to negativity that rejects orthodox modells of class struggle which have resulted in conformism and authoritarian reaction in the past.