Eros and Empire

Alexander Stoffel is a Lecturer in International Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London.

Introduction 1. The Inter/Nationalism of Gay Liberationism 2. The Anti-Imperialism of Black Lesbian Feminism 3. The Transnational Politics of Radical AIDS Activism 4. A Marxist Theory of Sexuality and Desire 5. Erotic Worldmaking Conclusion

"Stoffel reveals the dynamic interplay of Marxism and erotic worldmaking in queer thought, offering insight into movement contexts from gay liberation through AIDS activism. This is an important contribution to queer and trans studies, political theory, and United States and transnational history that will inspire readers to imagine new ways of changing the world." -Emily Hobson, University of Nevada, Reno "Through rich historical detail and theoretical sophistication, this book shows how queer struggles have engaged the question of the national and the transnational as a major site of disagreement, contestation, and emergence. Attending to the histories of gay liberation, black lesbian feminism, and HIV/AIDS activism, Stoffel argues that we cannot fully appreciate those movements without understanding their deep engagements with radical internationalism. The argument is one that should never be retired." -Roderick Ferguson, Yale University "Eros and Empire situates the erotic worldmaking of American gay liberationists, Black lesbians, and AIDS activists beyond the nation-state frame, toward a critical engagement with post-war capitalism and American empire as both conditions of possibility and sites of struggle. Stoffel's work reorients queer theory and LGBTQ+ studies toward a transnational scale to build political projects on the radical possibilities of the 'ungovernability of desire'." -Lauren B. Wilcox, University of Cambridge "In this groundbreaking book Stoffel illuminates how the erotic worldmaking of radical sexual politics in the United States was shaped by successive regimes of capitalist accumulation. By scaling up the concerns of queer Marxism to the level of the transnational while also offering a social history of queer theory, Eros and Empire revolutionizes our understanding of the relationship between the intimate and the imperial." -Rahul Rao, author of Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality