ABSTRACT
In 1997, the economic relations of sexuality were addressed in a volume of essays analysing phenomena ranging from the gentrification of gay neighbourhoods to campaigns for domestic partner benefits. But, significantly, queer theory is hardly mentioned in Homo Economics, with the exception of Richard Cornwall’s attempt to articulate interrelations between a property-owning individualism and both the proscription and the defence of homosexuality, via theories of consumer preferences and readings of Wilde and Genet (Cornwall 1997). In the two writers’ celebrations of a perverse individuality, Cornwall perceived a Bersanian ‘betrayal’ of the social relations of the market system. If his speculations suggested that a ‘queer political economy’ might be possible, an exchange published that same year debated its desirability.
