ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides contradictory historical position of the postmodern left from various angles and examines the ways it shapes our understanding of the materiality of sexuality. It examines this split as it appears in the few attempts within the tradition of historical materialism to theorize sexuality and in some of the efforts to redress it, before turning to the ways of understanding the materiality of sexuality proposed by queer theory. The book considers the drift in cultural studies toward making representation, identities, and the politics of subjectivity its main concerns while leaving the structures of capitalism invisible. It argues the benefits of reclaiming and elaborating a feminist standpoint that makes visible the transnational historical relations that bind some women's desires to other women's needs. Marxist feminists endorse the starting points of historical materialism as an explanation of social life.
