Eros and Alienation: Capitalism and the Making of Gendered Sexualities

Eros and Alienation delves into the underexplored relationship between alienated labour and sexuality. Our deeply human drive to shape the world around us and fulfil ourselves through labour is subverted by capitalist alienation, leaving us to find fulfilment elsewhere.

As a result, our erotic drives become the central focus for transformation and life-making, but are themselves restricted and fuelled by whatever energy is left after completing the monetised or social reproductive work required to survive. This alienation encounters ongoing resistance, as life-making activity can never be fully separated from the person who labours.

Alan Sears explores the ways this alienation frames the processes of gender and sexual formation, showing how the organisation of work contributes to the development of a dominant regime of gendered sexualities, defined by a binary gender mapping of desire as heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual.