Political Inversions

Political Inversions attempts to understand the forces at play in conflations both theoretical and cultural of homosexuality and fascism. Taking its cue from Adorno's assertion that totalitarianism and homosexuality belong together, the book examines how aberrant political and sexual economies have been equated across a variety of literary, visual, and theoretical discourses in contemporary debate. At the same time, the author explores the ways in which queer theory and historiography have responded defensively to such conflations, thereby excluding from current discussions much important material. Thus, for example, Political Inversions reassesses the work of German masculinist writers of the early part of the century thinkers whose definitive (but politically troubling) contributions to the construction of homosexual identity have been overlooked by a history heavily invested in the liberal Weimar tradition represented by figures such as Hirschfeld. Rather than reconstructing a history of gay identity, the book reads its texts as interventions in the broader political crises besetting democratic institutions in the first half of this century.