Perverse Politics, Postsocialist Radicality: Queer Marxism in China

Abstract

This article offers a queer postsocialist lens to theoretical contestations around neoliberalism, socialist legacies, capitalist reform, and the Chinese state. I foreground a queer Marxist position by situating Chinese capitalist developmentalism in global racial capitalism. I examine a recent GLBTQ hiring event in Shanghai alongside publications and personal involvement with the socialist organization “Queer Workers.” Based on this analysis, I contend that, rather than taking the Chinese state’s leftist legacies for granted, queer Marxism should be read as critical Marxism in the global postsocialist present. In the Marxist perspective, the sexual politics of queer liberation is inherently anti-statist and anti-capitalist. Further, queer Marxism in China, while remaining tied to postsocialism and the afterlife of the Cold War, should be situated within the broader struggle against racial capitalism. Groups like Queer Workers should be taken seriously as they are actively making space for historically and geographically grounded postsocialist radicality on their own terms.