Totality Inside Out - by Kevin Floyd & Jen Hedler Phillis & Sarika Chandra (Paperback)

About the Book

"However divergent their analyses may be in other ways, some prominent anti-capitalist critics have remained critical of contemporary debates over reparative justice for groups historically oppressed and marginalized on the basis of race, gender, sexual identity, sexual preference, and/or ability, arguing that the most these struggles can hope to produce is a more diversity-friendly capital. Meanwhile, scholars of gender and sexuality as well as race and ethnic studies maintain that, by elevating the socioeconomic above other logics of domination, anti-capitalist thought fails to acknowledge specific forms and experiences of subjugation. The thinkers and activists who appear in Totality Inside Out reject this divisive logic altogether. Instead, they aim for a more expansive analysis of our contemporary moment to uncover connected sites of political struggle over racial and economic justice, materialist feminist and queer critique, climate change, and aesthetic value. The re-imagined account of capitalist totality that appears in this volume illuminates the material interlinkages between discrepant social phenomena, forms of oppression, and group histories, offering multiple entry points for readers who are interested in exploring how capitalism shapes integral relations within the social whole"--

Book Synopsis

However divergent their analyses may be in other ways, some prominent anti-capitalist critics have remained critical of contemporary debates over reparative justice for groups historically oppressed and marginalized on the basis of race, gender, sexual identity, sexual preference, and/or ability, arguing that the most these struggles can hope to produce is a more diversity-friendly capital. Meanwhile, scholars of gender and sexuality as well as race and ethnic studies maintain that, by elevating the socioeconomic above other logics of domination, anti-capitalist thought fails to acknowledge specific forms and experiences of subjugation.

The thinkers and activists who appear in Totality Inside Out reject this divisive logic altogether. Instead, they aim for a more expansive analysis of our contemporary moment to uncover connected sites of political struggle over racial and economic justice, materialist feminist and queer critique, climate change, and aesthetic value. The re-imagined account of capitalist totality that appears in this volume illuminates the material interlinkages between discrepant social phenomena, forms of oppression, and group histories, offering multiple entry points for readers who are interested in exploring how capitalism shapes integral relations within the social whole.

Contributors: Brent Ryan Bellamy, Sarah Brouillette, Sarika Chandra, Chris Chen,
Joshua Clover, Tim Kreiner, Arthur Scarritt, Zoe Sutherland, Marina Vishmidt

Review Quotes

Strongly interdisciplinary, Totality Inside Out crosses the disciplines of history, philosophy, political theory, art, sociology, political economy, literature, and climate science, reconceptualizing the force of capitalism to account for the irreducible complexity of contemporary social formations.---Cinzia Arruzza, The New School for Social Research

About the Author

Kevin Floyd (Edited By)
Kevin Floyd (1967-2019) was an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University and author of The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism.

Jen Hedler Phillis (Edited By)
Jen Hedler Phillis lives in Chicago. Her primary academic area of interest revolves around the intersection of poetics and politics; her primary political area of interest revolves around dismantling capitalism. Her first book, Poems of the American Empire, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2019.

Sarika Chandra (Edited By)
Sarika Chandra is an Associate Professor of English at Wayne State University. She researches and teaches in the areas of globalization studies, American Studies, and Race and Ethnic Studies. Theorizing the U.S. in a transnational frame, her work focuses on race, ethnicity, im/migration, and the environment. Chandra is the author of Dislocalism: The Crisis of Globalization and the Remobilizing of Americanism (Ohio State University Press, 2011). Her publications have appeared in various volumes and journals including American Quarterly, Cultural Critique, and Modern Language Notes. With Chris Chen, she is finishing a book on capitalism and contemporary theories of racial group formation.