Toward a Queer Political Economy of Crisis

This chapter considers what it might mean to queer “the” economic crisis, given that same-sex and other non-normative sexualities are routinely erased in debates about “the economy.” However, it is not enough simply to “add queer and stir” to discussions of economic crisis; a central thrust of queer theory has been to critique notions of sexual identity as coherent and stable and for them to be organized and policed as such. Rather, a queer political economy of crisis should also interrogate how “crisis” itself is constituted through heteronormative gender logics and power relations. The chapter explores how neoliberal policy responses to crisis in the United Kingdom are serving to disadvantage lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBT/Q) communities and others who fall outside heterosexist, married monogamy (such as single parents), and how heteronormative imaginaries of “the family” are playing an important role in reproducing the neoliberal economic order.