In this daring study, Amy De'Ath develops a new type of literary criticism attuned to the way our lives are shaped by capital's impersonal compulsions - by what happens "behind our backs." Challenging the symptomatic interpretive methods of Western Marxism, De'Ath argues that value-critical accounts of Marx's work enable a feminist reading method that understands how value dissimulates itself from the social forms it generates, obscuring their historical content.
Close reading works by Kay Gabriel, Bernadette Mayer, Bhanu Kapil, Marie Annharte Baker, Alli Warren, and Hannah Black, Behind Our Backs explains how these examples of feminized ingenuity reveal capital to be the expression of a social relation that must take form-an abstract logic realized every day, and one whose gendering inversions are felt and critiqued in the poetic experiments of trans, queer, Indigenous, and diasporic writing. Feminized poetry, De'Ath demonstrates, is both a central archive and theoretical powerhouse for the critique of capitalist political economy.
| ISBN: | 9781503643840 |
| Publication date: | 17th February 2026 |
| Author: | Amy DeAth |
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 258 pages |
| Series: | Post 45 |
| Genres: |
Literature: history and criticism Feminism and feminist theory Literary theory |
In this daring study, Amy De'Ath develops a new type of literary criticism attuned to the way our lives are shaped by capital's impersonal compulsions - by what happens "behind our backs." Challenging the symptomatic interpretive methods of Western Marxism, De'Ath argues that value-critical accounts of Marx's work enable a feminist reading method that understands how value dissimulates itself from the social forms it generates, obscuring their historical content. Close reading works by Kay Gabriel, Bernadette Mayer, Bhanu Kapil, Marie Annharte Baker, Alli Warren, and Hannah Black, Behind Our Backs explains how these examples of feminized ingenuity reveal capital to be the expression of a social relation that must take form-an abstract logic realized every day, and one whose gendering inversions are felt and critiqued in the poetic experiments of trans, queer, Indigenous, and diasporic writing. Feminized poetry, De'Ath demonstrates, is both a central archive and theoretical powerhouse for the critique of capitalist political economy.
Behind Our Backs features in the following genres: Literature: history and criticism, Feminism and feminist theory, Literary theory
Paperback, Hardback. Not Available.
Behind Our Backs was written by Amy DeAth and published by Stanford University Press
Behind Our Backs has 258 pages
Yes it is part of Post 45 series