Radical Thinkers Set 17 – serie

American Homo offers a sweeping interpretation of the political, cultural and economic struggles of lesbian, gay and bisexual people to reveal how sexual minorities have challenged and changed American society. These provocative essays by long-time activist, writer, and theorist Jeffrey Escoffier tracks the lesbian and gay movements across the contested terrain of American political life. Starting from an urban subculture created by stigmatized and invisible men and women, LGBT movements have had to negotiate the historical tension between the homoeroticism that courses through American culture and virulent outbreaks of homophobic populism. Escoffier explores how every new success-whether it's civil rights, marriage, or cultural recognition-also enables new disciplinary and normalizing forms of domination, and why only the active exercise of democratic rights and participation in radical coalitions allows LGBT people to sustain both the benefits of community and the freedom of sexual perversity.

Though the interpretations of the interplay between sexism and capitalism, between the personal and the political, vary across this spectacularly wide ranging collection, each essay shares two fundamental premises. First, that the oppression of gays and lesbians is not an isolated case, and therefore their struggle is necessarily part of a larger movement for social liberation. And second, that the experience of gays and lesbians uphold the basic tenants of a foundational marxism, and that they are uniquely placed to contribute to a revitalization of marxist theory.