Sophie Monk

The dialectics of gay liberation in Britain in the sixties and seventies 

My PhD research focuses on the history of the gay liberation movement in Britain and the visions of revolutionary social change it sought to theorise and embody. The project takes a dialectical approach to theory and history, combining marxist critical theory and an engagement with the articles, pamphlets, ephemera and photographs located in archives of the gay movement across the UK. Crucially, I am interested in how records and traces of gay life and gay experience during this period actively contribute to theories of sexuality, gender and capitalism and the short-circuiting of their interrelations. My aim is to situate and historicise these contributions according to the twists and turns of capital accumulation and class struggle in the late twentieth century with the view to rubbing against the grain of normative and progressivist narratives of gay history that dominate the present. The project is funded by the TECHNE/AHRC consortium.

I am also a founding editor of Invert Journal, an independent journal of contemporary marxist thought focused on the abolition of gender and the liberation of feminised subjects.