Short Abstract:

The panel explores the interplay of queer lives and capitalism and how queer visibility often masks exploitation and precarity. We seek papers that investigate the nexus of sexuality and labour, highlighting both struggles and joys in queer experiences within capitalist systems.

Long Abstract:

Queer times are complicated. Expectations of "normalcy" meet ascriptions of exceptionality and portrayals as moral dangers to society, sexuality, or children. Political discussions about queerness are frequently about civil rights, but we see the need to centre the material aspects of queer lives: labour and care. Such focus illuminates tensions between the logic of accumulation and the survival and well-being of queer individuals and communities.

To materialize queer anthropology, we want to ask about the interrelation between forms of sexuality, kinds of relationship models and access to resources. We are interested in the interplay of frustration and joy, representation and the closet. The visibility of queerness in capitalist markets grows, as grand pink capitalism in the entertainment industry, as the rediscovery of queer people as consumers (think gay cruises). This visibility, however, often masks the underlying exploitation and precarity that many queer workers face, highlighting the contradictions inherent in 'queer capitalism.' Often, the interplay between exploitation and expulsion comes in the form of 'queer disposability,' where people are systematically excluded from the benefits and protections that sustain the reproduction of the dominant social order. Care in such settings often comes in the form of a fraught commoning, where scarce incomes and reproductive labour become collective resources for survival.

We invite papers that ethnographically or historically focus on the nexus between labour and sexuality, and address questions of exploitation and expulsion while being interested in aspiration, joy, and ways of subjectivation.

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