Abstract
The publication of Sex, Needs and Queer Culture comes at an interesting juncture in the development of lesbian and gay subcultures and rights-based movements. Increasingly mainstreamed and normalised, lesbians and gay men are far less understood as queer or belonging to queer subcultures within Western cultural contexts. Indeed, Alderson’s text is an engaging addition to a growing pile of books on the merits and ills of gay and lesbian normalisation, raising pertinent questions about whether we are witness to the death of the ‘homosexual’, the ‘closet’ and the association of queer with the intellectual project known as queer theory. Against this cultural, political and intellectual landscape, Alderson offers us a timely and incisive analysis of whether capitalism is progressive for ‘queers’. For some queers, capitalism is a normative regime that routinely links sexuality with consumption and assimilates some gay and lesbian sexualities into a heteronormative regime. For others, capitalism has enabled and sustained new forms of queer visibility, evident in the investment and commercialisation of public spaces for queers to socialise and corporate sponsorship of queer events such as Pride festivals. This gives rise to the following question around which the book is structured: What are the possibilities for political resistance within queer subcultures?
With this backdrop in mind, Alderson sets about discussing the political economic changes that have occurred since the 1960s, assessing their consequences for a politics of sexuality that emerged in that decade and beyond. Yet the book is not a dyed-in-the-wool sexualities study. As Alderson admits, his focus is wider as he attempts to provide ‘alternative ways of grasping the category of sexuality that connects it back to a capitalist totality’ (p. 29). It is that capitalist totality that forms a far larger and muscular target for Alderson, who wishes to see it superseded. As such, long stretches of the text discard sexuality from its analytical purview, foregrounding instead a set of conceptual insights drawn from cultural theorists such as Herbert Marcuse, Raymond Williams and Alan Sinfield. In addition, the book contributes to the canon of literature on sexuality and capitalism (e.g. Rosemary Hennessy’s (2000) Profit and Pleasure) and theoretical conjunctions between queer theory and Marxism (e.g. Kevin Floyd’s (2009) The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism).
The book is organised into four chapters and is prefixed by a lengthy introduction. Upon reading the latter, one concern looms large that threatens to overshadow the entire book. Alderson’s book is essentially an account of gay men and gay male contexts through which the author weaves an analysis of the relationship between queer and capitalism. Now, there is nothing wrong with this per se, but it plays into the hands of those critics who will cite Alderson as another example of how queer (as theory, as culture, as an identity, etc.) is routinely equated to gay men and their concerns. Alderson is upfront about this, declaring that the focus on gay male contexts is decidedly ‘unqueer’ (p. 33, emphasis in original). Nonetheless, the author sticks to his guns and pursues the gay male experience, attributing it a certain distinctiveness. Although Alderson is critically reflective about the book’s shortcoming in that regard, and relatedly, of how gay male sexuality has become a privileged sign, I fear that some readers will not venture beyond the introduction. There are plenty of Others who still have investments in the term queer but who might feel this book neglects their concerns and interests in reading what is at stake for queer(s) within capitalistic societies. Queers and queer cultures are capacious terms. Although the internal logics of inclusion and exclusion reproduced by evoking queer as an umbrella identity are hotly debated, queer still provides a refuge for non-normative subjects. For example, women who identify as ‘queer’ might well find little on offer in that regard, as there is no substantial engagement with the dynamics between queer, feminist critiques of patriarchy and capitalism. This is a shame because superseding a capitalist totality, as Alderson envisages it, will necessarily require a wider and fuller engagement with Others, but perhaps this is a project for other writers to scope and champion.
The material Alderson draws upon is varied and includes the heavyweight theories of Herbert Marcuse and Raymond Williams, Puig’s novel The Kiss of the Spider Woman, and British TV programmes such as Queer as Folk and Cucumber and a generous helping of queer theory. The first chapter considers how the period since the 1960s has been understood as a form of transition from modernity to postmodernity. This chapter shows how the move into neoliberalism has paved the way for flexible forms of accumulation, giving rise to the conditions of possibility for how sexually dissident subcultures have been assimilated into the mainstream. Alderson is critical of capitalism’s warm embrace of queer as a form of difference because it promises inclusion and visibility but ultimately only delivers both to the privileged few, most conspicuous among them being White, middle-class, urban-dwelling gay men. To gain some theoretical traction on the issues at stake here, Alderson continues to excavate ideas from the work of Herbert Marcuse and Raymond Williams in Chapter 2. Rejecting Foucault’s criticism of Marcuse, Alderson deploys Marcuse to build a bridge between sexuality and political economy to avoid an outright dismissal of capitalism as an entirely negative regime for queers. In Chapter 3, Alderson foregrounds the following two terms that are key to the book: counterculture and subculture. Observing how the two are used interchangeably, Alderson returns to the historical use of counterculture in the Unites States where it has roots in forms of radicalism that were different to those in Europe. One observation to emerge from this analysis is that countercultures have opened up possibilities for forms of sexual radicalism, of which queer theory is but one example. Here Alderson moves sharply into the mode of literary analysis, specifically, to recover Puig’s novel The Kiss of the Spider Woman from totalising postmodern interpretations that consign its revolutionary hopes and possibilities to history.
In the last section of the book, Alderson relies on the work of Alan Sinfield, in particular his materialist notion of subculture and its ongoing relevance in regard to understanding the cultural phenomena of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) subcultures. Granted, the focus on gay male experience and context hampers a fuller account of this important issue, but Alderson develops an absorbing account of ‘post-gay’ culture, dubiously labelled as such, to highlight the potential for assimilation that now exists for some gay men and lesbians. Indeed, I agree with Alderson that it is the former who are often treated as ‘quintessential homonormative subjects’ (p. 33) in that respect. Moreover, Alderson examines how the normalisation of gay male sexualities within the media is recognised and celebrated via TV shows, such as Little Britain and Queer as Folk. Acknowledging this and the pressures brought to bear on ‘gay culture’ by what Alderson describes as ‘mainstreaming’ is to recognise how facets of gay culture have been incorporated into neoliberal diversity agendas ‘pursued by businesses as proof of [their] modernity’ (p. 280). Here, Alderson’s critique converses with wider debates about how some nations are ‘pinkwashing’ themselves as ‘gay-friendly’ to signify their cosmopolitanism, a move that has been criticised as glossing over persistent inequalities and the damage political regimes have inflicted on queer subjects.
In the end, despite the various conceptual resources Alderson accumulates throughout the book, he offers ‘no grounds for great optimism’ (p. 32) for the potential in contemporary politics of sexuality to converge with socialist aspirations. Some readers may find this note of pessimism obscures other possibilities for political resistance, while others will find a cool sense of what is politically (im)possible carried in Alderson’s suggestion, that there is no obviously progressive way out of current capitalistic economic arrangements. Still there is some optimism, as Alderson clings to the idea that subculture may still have a role to play in generating critical consciousness, even in the problematic forms he criticises. To that end, ‘non-judgemental organisations, institutions and spaces that are at least not hyper-commercialised’ are said to be possibilities that might foster ‘anti- or non-consumerist sensibilities’ (p. 297). In these types of ‘independent’ organisations, Alderson hopes we can unhitch queer from its association with privilege in the media. This is an exciting prospect which comes in the closing pages of the book, and which deserves a greater level of detail and exploration than it is currently allocated by the author. In summary, while readers might be frustrated with Alderson’s reading of queer culture through a gay male lens, and although the text jumps abruptly at times from highbrow theory to analysing novels and pop culture, Alderson has written a provocative account of the dynamics of capitalism, queer culture and political resistance.