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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.
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.
200 pages, Paperback
Published January 20, 2025
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February 10, 2025Many opportunities to incorporate asexuality studies; none were taken.
In fact, asexuality is not mentioned or acknowledged once (in the orientation sense), despite many mentions of LGB orientations (of course). Chapter Four was especially frustrating in this regard. There was so much else that could have been said, by talking about allonormativity and compulsory sexuality for starters. This would have bolstered and underscored the main points. For a queer academic book published 2025... this is starting to feel like erasure rather than oversight. Just one measly mention of the A in LGBTQIA+ would have set me right, if that's not the case.
Otherwise, this is an interesting and thought-provoking read. The book is trans affirming and the author has a good handle on feminism.
In fact, asexuality is not mentioned or acknowledged once (in the orientation sense), despite many mentions of LGB orientations (of course). Chapter Four was especially frustrating in this regard. There was so much else that could have been said, by talking about allonormativity and compulsory sexuality for starters. This would have bolstered and underscored the main points. For a queer academic book published 2025... this is starting to feel like erasure rather than oversight. Just one measly mention of the A in LGBTQIA+ would have set me right, if that's not the case.
Otherwise, this is an interesting and thought-provoking read. The book is trans affirming and the author has a good handle on feminism.
December 23, 2025
[This is not a rigorous or fully worked through critique of Sears' book, just some notes on it that I wanted a place to record for my own future purposes. It shouldn't be treated as such]
This was really good, but I do have some niche methodological issues with it that I'm going to bore everyone who reads this with by formulating here. What it does very well, first of all, is make clear the hidden connections between capitalist social relations and cis/hetero-patriatchal hierarchies, as they exist on the level of immediate appearences. Tonnes of empirical examples are given to show, for instance, how sexuality is shaped through capitalistic ideologies of able-bodiedness organised around the ability to labour, which exclude those perceived as disabled from full inclusion within hegemonic practices of eroticism, and by extension the gender categories from which those practices are said to derive. Or how the containment of the erotic within the margins of the day, after the greater part of people's life-energies have already been spent performing alienated labour, disproportionately impact women through things like the orgasm gap, because of dominant patriarchal ideas around who sex is fundamentally "for". And much else that is all very good and important to talk about.
What it doesn't do so well, in my eyes, is apply the Marxist dialectical method as it makes these important connections. The connections are made, to be sure, but their character as necessary outcomes of the capitalist mode of production, and its constitutive contradictions, are only ever gestured towards. Sears makes some inroads here for instance when he talks about the "erotic containment" mentioned above as necessary to the rationalisation of production processes that enable a maximization of workplace productivity. And also when he talks about the school as a disciplinary site, where future workers are trained to subordinate their bodily needs to the regulation of clock-time, because accumulation would be hindered if this moral attribute were not instilled in workers at such a young age. But overall, unfortunately, we are much more often left with links between phenomena (capitalism and imperialism, for example) that are not shown to be mediated by the unfolding of a dialectic. Outside of these tantalising sections, Sears never abstracts from the world of immediate appearances to penetrate the inner connections within capitalism's basic determinations that drive the links he explores. In this deeper sense, then, Sears' analysis separates the elements that it purports to connect, because the emergence of the connections appears important for understanding the world, to be sure, but also ultimately random.That is, the elements being connected are held to be dual- or triple- or whatever-polynimial systems interacting in relations of exteriority, rather than coequal moments of the immanent unfolding of fundamentally capitalist contradictions.Thus can Sears simply declare, for instance, that "capitalism has developed in an imperialist mode" historically... This is of course true, but a different claim to saying that imperialism arises from the same basic contradictions of the commodity-form wherefrom patriarchy, the ideology of ability, etc etc derive, an argument that would put us on fertile ground for some much more rigorous expoundings of the reciprocal links between capitalism and these themes.
Ultimately, if we want a genuinely radical analysis of the hierarchies involved in capitalist production and social reproduction, in all their plentitude, we have to return to Marx in a much more substantive, methodologically minded way than simply talking about class and capital and contradictions again. To be blunt, that approach simply doesn't go far enough.
This was really good, but I do have some niche methodological issues with it that I'm going to bore everyone who reads this with by formulating here. What it does very well, first of all, is make clear the hidden connections between capitalist social relations and cis/hetero-patriatchal hierarchies, as they exist on the level of immediate appearences. Tonnes of empirical examples are given to show, for instance, how sexuality is shaped through capitalistic ideologies of able-bodiedness organised around the ability to labour, which exclude those perceived as disabled from full inclusion within hegemonic practices of eroticism, and by extension the gender categories from which those practices are said to derive. Or how the containment of the erotic within the margins of the day, after the greater part of people's life-energies have already been spent performing alienated labour, disproportionately impact women through things like the orgasm gap, because of dominant patriarchal ideas around who sex is fundamentally "for". And much else that is all very good and important to talk about.
What it doesn't do so well, in my eyes, is apply the Marxist dialectical method as it makes these important connections. The connections are made, to be sure, but their character as necessary outcomes of the capitalist mode of production, and its constitutive contradictions, are only ever gestured towards. Sears makes some inroads here for instance when he talks about the "erotic containment" mentioned above as necessary to the rationalisation of production processes that enable a maximization of workplace productivity. And also when he talks about the school as a disciplinary site, where future workers are trained to subordinate their bodily needs to the regulation of clock-time, because accumulation would be hindered if this moral attribute were not instilled in workers at such a young age. But overall, unfortunately, we are much more often left with links between phenomena (capitalism and imperialism, for example) that are not shown to be mediated by the unfolding of a dialectic. Outside of these tantalising sections, Sears never abstracts from the world of immediate appearances to penetrate the inner connections within capitalism's basic determinations that drive the links he explores. In this deeper sense, then, Sears' analysis separates the elements that it purports to connect, because the emergence of the connections appears important for understanding the world, to be sure, but also ultimately random.That is, the elements being connected are held to be dual- or triple- or whatever-polynimial systems interacting in relations of exteriority, rather than coequal moments of the immanent unfolding of fundamentally capitalist contradictions.Thus can Sears simply declare, for instance, that "capitalism has developed in an imperialist mode" historically... This is of course true, but a different claim to saying that imperialism arises from the same basic contradictions of the commodity-form wherefrom patriarchy, the ideology of ability, etc etc derive, an argument that would put us on fertile ground for some much more rigorous expoundings of the reciprocal links between capitalism and these themes.
Ultimately, if we want a genuinely radical analysis of the hierarchies involved in capitalist production and social reproduction, in all their plentitude, we have to return to Marx in a much more substantive, methodologically minded way than simply talking about class and capital and contradictions again. To be blunt, that approach simply doesn't go far enough.
September 14, 2025
“Queerness is utopian”
Sears’ writing style is near impenetrable, making the first half of the book hard to get through. I’m glad I stuck with it though as the second half contains less rehashing of existing ideas and more of his original thoughts, as well as a great literature-flavoured section on queer utopia. Not a keeper, but a few things brought up in my book club that studied the book will no doubt stick.
Sears’ writing style is near impenetrable, making the first half of the book hard to get through. I’m glad I stuck with it though as the second half contains less rehashing of existing ideas and more of his original thoughts, as well as a great literature-flavoured section on queer utopia. Not a keeper, but a few things brought up in my book club that studied the book will no doubt stick.
December 1, 2025
A great application of social reproduction theory to gender and sexuality in which the book argues that the anti-queer logic of capitalism derives from the alienation of paid productive and unpaid or poorly paid reproductive labour (human life-making activity) and is founded on relations of compulsion and subordination that require the containment of eroticism and gender expression
The book convincingly argues that erotic self-realisation is separated from transformative life-making in conditions of alienation, organising work and sex into purportedly distinct realms of existence and directing energies primarily towards subordinated labour. In conditions of alienation sexual activity is cast, as all other areas of human life-making activity, as a means to an end, the way to gain access to required resources to meet wants and needs rather than inherently fulfilling in itself. Labour separated from inherent fulfilment ends up as drudge work marked by compulsion. While sexuality under conditions of alienation tends to become transactional as people face relentless pressure to offer up their core human capacities in exchange for access to resources to meet their wants and needs.
Draws well on queer theory including Chitty, Drucker, Floyd, Muñoz among others, for example in expanding reification to the sexual realm in conditions of alienation, where we our desires are not met through our transformative labour nor collectively through our social world-making. Instead our erotic longings feel beyond our control, oriented around gender such that we begin to identify ourselves as primarily lesbian/gay, straight or bi. This historically specific organisation of erotic practice is misrecognised as the eternal and natural expression of human desire hard-wired into our being
Highly recommended for anyone interested in queer marxism
The book convincingly argues that erotic self-realisation is separated from transformative life-making in conditions of alienation, organising work and sex into purportedly distinct realms of existence and directing energies primarily towards subordinated labour. In conditions of alienation sexual activity is cast, as all other areas of human life-making activity, as a means to an end, the way to gain access to required resources to meet wants and needs rather than inherently fulfilling in itself. Labour separated from inherent fulfilment ends up as drudge work marked by compulsion. While sexuality under conditions of alienation tends to become transactional as people face relentless pressure to offer up their core human capacities in exchange for access to resources to meet their wants and needs.
Draws well on queer theory including Chitty, Drucker, Floyd, Muñoz among others, for example in expanding reification to the sexual realm in conditions of alienation, where we our desires are not met through our transformative labour nor collectively through our social world-making. Instead our erotic longings feel beyond our control, oriented around gender such that we begin to identify ourselves as primarily lesbian/gay, straight or bi. This historically specific organisation of erotic practice is misrecognised as the eternal and natural expression of human desire hard-wired into our being
Highly recommended for anyone interested in queer marxism
September 22, 2025
This book contains some good insights about erotic containment, the heterosexist socialization and regimentation of workers, parks and forests as erotic oases (or exilic spaces), and the dehumanization demanded by regimes of fitness and discipline (with the author rightly likening gyms to factories), yet I really question whether "queer marxism" is a coherent framework for resistance.
Unsurprisingly, Karl Marx's gross homophobia is erased here, and there is barely any mention of the heteronormativity and notorious anti-queer violence imposed and perpetrated by self-described Marxist States. I am very unconvinced that either Marx or Trotsky (the butcher of the Kronstadt sailors) has anything meaningful to tell us about queer liberation.
It was telling that the author coincided with Trotsky's analysis of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the closing pages of the book, thus ahistorically excusing the Red Army commander and Lenin from any accountability for the course of the revolution. How revealing, too, that the author would discuss Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed without naming it or her as anarchist! I also hold the author's critique of consent in sexuality to be a huge red flag.
Unsurprisingly, Karl Marx's gross homophobia is erased here, and there is barely any mention of the heteronormativity and notorious anti-queer violence imposed and perpetrated by self-described Marxist States. I am very unconvinced that either Marx or Trotsky (the butcher of the Kronstadt sailors) has anything meaningful to tell us about queer liberation.
It was telling that the author coincided with Trotsky's analysis of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the closing pages of the book, thus ahistorically excusing the Red Army commander and Lenin from any accountability for the course of the revolution. How revealing, too, that the author would discuss Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed without naming it or her as anarchist! I also hold the author's critique of consent in sexuality to be a huge red flag.
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