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Keerim Kim completed Assignment 09

In Roderick Ferguson’s “Aberrations,” he suggests an idea of how property, capital, prostitution are related. He starts the article with stories that clearly show the intersection of poverty, race, gender and economic discrimination. First, racial exclusion in social occupation is emphasized as he shows a picture of colored men waiting room and colored men restroom. Also, an example of black drag queen is introduced. Drag queen prostitute is shown as one of the features of urban capitalism, and showed how sexual difference became reasons for discrimination and poverty. Them, in particular, represented economic and social alienations. They were even being excluded from mainstream queers, and African-American communities. Ferguson asserts that racialized gender is one of the capitalist modes of production. According to the article, Marxism and liberal pluralism share the idea that the nation and property are outcomes of racial and class exclusions. Also, the idea relates with historical materialism. Emerged from racialized discourse, normative heterosexuality is justified. In capitalist theme, Marx argued universalism of heteropatriarchy, as symbolization of labor done by heterosexuals. Marx also asserted that the symbol of dehumanization is largely shown through prostitution. He focused prostitution as a specific representation of generalized “labor prostitution.” According to the article, it states that being castrated from all the means of production, the worker has only that labor resides in his body to sell. (Ferguson 8) Therefore, Marx relates prostitution as property of communal lust, that is an outcome of capitalist alienation.

On the other hand, Ferguson starts the interpretation from “Queer of Color” analysis. According to him, nation and capital is outcome of intersections that contradict the idea of liberal nation-state and capital as sites of resolution, perfection, progress, and confirmation. (Ferguson 3) Therefore, queer of color analysis justifies the intersectionality of race, gender and class and proves that the contrasting idea of capitalism is mistaken. Furturemore, queer of color analysis extends its idea to women of color feminism, by investigating intersections.