The conference seeks papers that focus on how need and desire are produced in a late capitalist society and on possible revolutionary strategies that might help us understand those needs that capitalism attempts to prevent us from seeing.  What do human beings need as citizens, workers, and lovers?  How do cultural and historical processes determine our needs and desires?  Does class and geographical region influence our expression of those needs and desires?  Can capitalism's apparent satisfaction of needs be countered by a politics based in revolutionary needs?

Rosemary Hennessy is a significant voice in contemporary materialist feminist theory.  Her book Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism (Routledge) argues for an analysis of sexual identity rooted in a rigorous understanding of the structures of late capitalism, labor and commodification. Hennessy has also written Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse, and co-edited Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives with Chrys Ingraham.  Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Cultural Critique, Rethinking Marxism, Genders, and Mediations.  She is an associate professor in the English department at the University of Albany, SUNY where she teaches classes in feminist theory, Marxist theory, postmodern critical and cultural theory, lesbian and gay studies and queer theory.

Peter McLaren is one of the most influential advocates of critical pedagogy, both nationally and internationally. A major proponent of the work of the late Paulo Freire, McLaren covers a wide range of topics, from film criticism, to cultural studies, to the pedagogy of Che Guevara. His books include Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture, Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution, and Life in Schools. McLaren is Professor of Urban Schooling: Curriculum, Teaching, Leadership & Policy Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.  His current research interests include post-colonial and postmodern theories applied to curriculum development and instruction; critical social theory and cultural studies in the development of approaches to urban school reform; the development of pedagogical theory and practice based on critical multiculturalism, critical ethnography, and critical literacy.

Prospective panels include (but are not limited to) the following:

Critical and revolutionary pedagogies: Freire & Guevara
Radical and materialist feminisms
The need for a Marxist political philosophy
Commodity culture, advertising, and desire
Popular/working culture and aesthetics
Disability studies
Red love and the family
Capitalism and sexual identities
New structures of feeling
The politics of desire and pleasure
Acceleration of needs:  the colonization of lifestyle
Species being and needs
Needing to leave: travel literature and tourism
Capitalism, theft, and intellectual property
Urban landscapes: cities of need
Utopian literatures and philosophies
The need for a revolutionary future
Charity, hunger, and activist cultures
Ethics of need and the welfare state
Class and wage labor in the new economy
Gender and modernity
Cinema
Do we need literature?
Liberation theology
Revolutionary theater

Non-traditional or performative panels will be considered.
The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2001.

One page abstracts, questions, and comments should be submitted to the Marxist Reading Group at extinction@clas.ufl.edu.