First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &amp; Francis, an informa company.

Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (Thinking Gender)

Literature & Fiction

Hennessy, Rosemary

History & Criticism

Routledge

Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives

During the 1980s, capitalism triumphantly secured its global reach, anti-communist ideologies hammered home socialism's inherent failure, the New Left increasingly moved into the professional middle class--and many of feminism's earlier priorities were marginalized. "Identity politics", often formulated in terms of social reconstructionism or multiculturalism, has increasingly suppressed materialist feminism's systematic perspective, replacing it with discourse analysis or cultural politics. Materialist Feminism: A Reader argues against the retreat to multiculturalism for keeping invisible the material links among the explosion of meaning-making practices in highly industrialized social sectors, the exploitation of women's labor, and the appropriation of women's bodies that continues to undergird the scramble for profits and state power in multinational capitalism.

Ingraham, Chrys

Reference

Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism

Drawing on an international range of examples, from Che Guevarra to "The Crying Game," Profit and Pleasure leads the discussion of sexuality to a consideration of material reality and the substance of men and women's everyday lives.

Fires on the Border: The Passionate Politics of Labor Organizing on the Mexican Frontera

The history of the maquiladoras has been punctuated by workers’ organized resistance to abysmal working and living conditions. Over years of involvement in such movements, Rosemary Hennessy was struck by an elusive but significant feature of these struggles: the extent to which organizing is driven by attachments of affection and antagonism, belief, betrayal, and identification.What precisely is the “affective” dimension of organizing for justice? Are affects and emotions the same? And how can their value be calculated? Fires on the Border takes up these questions of labor and community organizing—its “affect-culture”—on Mexico’s northern border from the early 1970s to the present day. Through these campaigns, Hennessy illuminates the attachments and identifications that motivate people to act on behalf of one another and that bind them to a common cause. The book’s unsettling, even jarring, narratives bring together empirical and ethnographic accounts—of specific campaigns, the untold stories of gay and lesbian organizers, love and utopian longing—in concert with materialist theories of affect and the critical good sense of Mexican organizers.Teasing out the integration of affect-culture in economic relations and cultural processes, Hennessy provides evidence that sexuality and gender as strong affect attractors are incorporated in the harvesting of surplus labor. At the same time, workers’ testimonies confirm that the capacities for bonding and affective attachment, far from being entirely at the service of capital, are at the very heart of social movements devoted to sustaining life.

Business & Money

Economics

Univ. of Minnesota Press

The history of the maquiladoras has been punctuated by workers’ organized resistance to abysmal working and living conditions. Over years of involvement in such movements, Rosemary Hennessy was struck by an elusive but significant feature of these struggles: the extent to which organizing is driven by attachments of affection and antagonism, belief, betrayal, and identification.
What precisely is the “affective” dimension of organizing for justice? Are affects and emotions the same? And how can their value be calculated? Fires on the Border takes up these questions of labor and community organizing—its “affect-culture”—on Mexico’s northern border from the early 1970s to the present day. Through these campaigns, Hennessy illuminates the attachments and identifications that motivate people to act on behalf of one another and that bind them to a common cause. The book’s unsettling, even jarring, narratives bring together empirical and ethnographic accounts—of specific campaigns, the untold stories of gay and lesbian organizers, love and utopian longing—in concert with materialist theories of affect and the critical good sense of Mexican organizers. 
Teasing out the integration of affect-culture in economic relations and cultural processes, Hennessy provides evidence that sexuality and gender as strong affect attractors are incorporated in the harvesting of surplus labor. At the same time, workers’ testimonies confirm that the capacities for bonding and affective attachment, far from being entirely at the service of capital, are at the very heart of social movements devoted to sustaining life.

Profit and Pleasure

Profit and Pleasure, Second Edition is a classic intervention into the relationship between capitalism and sexual identity. Rosemary Hennessy boldly reorients queer theory toward an up-close analysis of the structures of consumption, labor, and commodification, revealing how sexual identity―in the varied ways it has been culturally differentiated and lived―has been fundamentally affected by these principles of capitalism. In this second edition, a new introduction by the author reasserts a Marxist feminist standpoint as the most theoretically developed feminist analysis of capitalism’s cultural logics. She presents a range of key concepts―among them totality, overdetermination, social reproduction―outlining their evolution and continued relevance to analysis of sexuality since the book’s first publication in 2000. The introduction addresses important developments in materialist approaches to sexuality during the past two decades and concludes by returning to the notion of "love" as defined in the original edition, making a call for the common potential of human collaboration and action to ignite a radical sexual politics.  This seminal text will appeal to students and scholars of feminist studies, gay and lesbian studies, and cultural and literary studies.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Profit and Pleasure, Second Edition is a classic intervention into the relationship between capitalism and sexual identity. Rosemary Hennessy boldly reorients queer theory toward an up-close analysis of the structures of consumption, labor, and commodification, revealing how sexual identity―in the varied ways it has been culturally differentiated and lived―has been fundamentally affected by these principles of capitalism. In this second edition, a new introduction by the author reasserts a Marxist feminist standpoint as the most theoretically developed feminist analysis of capitalism’s cultural logics. She presents a range of key concepts―among them totality, overdetermination, social reproduction―outlining their evolution and continued relevance to analysis of sexuality since the book’s first publication in 2000. The introduction addresses important developments in materialist approaches to sexuality during the past two decades and concludes by returning to the notion of "love" as defined in the original edition, making a call for the common potential of human collaboration and action to ignite a radical sexual politics. This seminal text will appeal to students and scholars of feminist studies, gay and lesbian studies, and cultural and literary studies.

Recovering the bold voices and audacious lives of women who confronted capitalist society’s failures and injustices in the 1930s—a decade unnervingly similar to our own\nIn the Company of Radical Women Writers rediscovers the political commitments and passionate advocacy of seven writers—Black, Jewish, and white—who as young women turned to communism around the Great Depression and, over decades of national crisis, spoke to issues of labor, land, and love in ways that provide urgent, thought-provoking guidance for today. Rosemary Hennessy spotlights the courageous lives of women who confronted similar challenges to those we still face: exhausting and unfair labor practices, unrelenting racial injustice, and environmental devastation. 
As Hennessy brilliantly shows, the documentary journalism and creative and biographical writings of Marvel Cooke, Louise Thompson Patterson, Claudia Jones, Alice Childress, Josephine Herbst, Meridel Le Sueur, and Muriel Rukeyser recognized that life is sustained across a web of dependencies that we each have a duty to maintain. Their work brought into sharp focus the value and dignity of Black women’s domestic work, confronted the destructive myths of land exploitation and white supremacy, and explored ways of knowing attuned to a life-giving erotic energy that spans bodies and relations. In doing so, they also expanded the scope of American communism. 
By tracing the attention these seven women pay to “life-making” as the relations supporting survival and wellbeing—from Harlem to the American South and Midwest—In the Company of Radical Women Writers reveals their groundbreaking reconceptions of the political and provides bracing inspiration in the ongoing fight for justice.

In the Company of Radical Women Writers

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hennessy, Rosemary. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hennessy, Rosemary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hennessy, Rosemary. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (Thinking Gender)

Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives

Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism

Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism

Fires on the Border: The Passionate Politics of Labor Organizing on the Mexican Frontera

Fires on the Border: The Passionate Politics of Labor Organizing on the Mexican Frontera

Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism

Profit and Pleasure

In the Company of Radical Women Writers