Reading Marx in Beirut: Disorganised Study and the Politics of Queer Utopia
This article draws on ethnographic research carried out with Marxist reading groups run by a Lebanese revolutionary socialist organization. I examine the labor that Marxist theoretical practice was doing in a political conjuncture widely viewed as post-Marxist , discussing the relationship between theory and affect, and the role that affective infrastructures play in maintaining and reproducing social movements and political organisations. Drawing on Moten and Harney, I frame this intellectual labor as a form of dissonant , disorganized study - a mode of preparing for revolution by being together in brokenness and routinely generating a commitment to a particular political horizon. This form of political praxis as study unfolded within a Lebanese activist scene dominated by a pragmatic conception of politics, within which the critical labor of the radical and revolutionary left was largely considered sterile , mired in something akin to what Berlant calls cruel optimism. Drawing on Munoz, his conceptualisation of the politics of queer utopia, and his defence of utopian imaginativeness, I argue that for radical and revolutionary leftists in counter-revolutionary times, cultivating solidarity and camaraderie by maintaining a space of study that could enable technologies of both self and collective constituted a productive political act.
urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-ep0003-2020-240-80214
https://doi.org/10.17192/meta.2020.14.8021
article
https://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/ep/0003/2020/240/8021/8021.png
Lebanon
urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-ep0003-2020-240-80214
2020
This article draws on ethnographic research carried out with Marxist reading groups run by a Lebanese revolutionary socialist organization. I examine the labor that Marxist theoretical practice was doing in a political conjuncture widely viewed as post-Marxist , discussing the relationship between theory and affect, and the role that affective infrastructures play in maintaining and reproducing social movements and political organisations. Drawing on Moten and Harney, I frame this intellectual labor as a form of dissonant , disorganized study - a mode of preparing for revolution by being together in brokenness and routinely generating a commitment to a particular political horizon. This form of political praxis as study unfolded within a Lebanese activist scene dominated by a pragmatic conception of politics, within which the critical labor of the radical and revolutionary left was largely considered sterile , mired in something akin to what Berlant calls cruel optimism. Drawing on Munoz, his conceptualisation of the politics of queer utopia, and his defence of utopian imaginativeness, I argue that for radical and revolutionary leftists in counter-revolutionary times, cultivating solidarity and camaraderie by maintaining a space of study that could enable technologies of both self and collective constituted a productive political act.
https://doi.org/10.17192/meta.2020.14.8021
English
2020-07-13
application/pdf
2020-07-14
Marxism
2020-07-13
Reading Marx in Beirut: Disorganised Study and the Politics of Queer Utopia
utopia
queerness
Chamas, Sophie
Chamas
Sophie
study
Publikationsserver der Universitätsbibliothek Marburg
Universitätsbibliothek Marburg
application/pdf
https://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/ep/0003/2020/240/cover.png
PeriodicalPart
Periodical
Philipps-Universität Marburg
urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-ep00032
General history of Asia; Middle East
https://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/ep/0003/cover.png
2196-629X
2714728-9
2013
Middle East - Topics + Arguments
Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS)
Gender
Vol 14 (2020)
urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-ep0003-2020-2400
2020-07-13
14
2020
leftism
PRESERVATION_MASTER
VIEW
Image
PRESERVATION_MASTER