Revolutionary Desires: a reading list from Xuanlin Tham

It's time for a very exciting guest post! The inimitable Xuanlin Tham joins us ahead of their launch in the shop, to share some of the books that fed into the writing of Revolutionary Desires: the political power of the sex scene.

The book is part of the wonderful Inklings series from 404 Ink and will be launched at Lighthouse on March 12th. Tickets are available HERE!

Hello friends of Lighthouse! Xuanlin here.

I jumped at the chance to curate this reading list, as one of the most enjoyable parts of writing this book was the sheer amount of reading about sex that I was officially sanctioned to do (not that that matters, it was going to happen anyways, but how fortunate of a task)!

Revolutionary Desires: The Political Power of the Sex Scene (perhaps surprisingly) does not speak the discourse of 'sex positivity', which at its worst, reductively glosses over enduring issues of power and inequality; it seeks out more ambivalent, shadowy, unsettling bedfellows that provoke interrogation of what sex means under capitalist culture.

This reading list spans fiction which has been adapted into films discussed in the book; fiction with bracingly evocative sex scenes that illuminate the colonisation of our intimate lives under capitalism; works of queer, feminist, and philosophical theory that underpin the book; and books that I feel share its political desires and DNA.

P.S. If this reading list lacks smut, I feel appropriately chastised, and am eagerly seeking out your recommendations.

In the Cut by Susanna Moore – Adapted into Jane Campion's brilliant, brilliant 2003 film, which I discuss the chapter on the sex scene under patriarchy.

Crash by J.G. Ballard – Adapted into David Cronenberg's 1996 film of the same name, one of the first films I knew I would write about in the book. Sex as a lens for excoriating widespread alienation and violence under late capitalism.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters – The Victorian source material for Park Chan-wook's delicious adaptation, 2016's The Handmaiden, which swaps the English countryside for Japanese-occupied Korea. Both book and film deliciously posit the queer erotic as a force strong enough to overcome hierarchical systems of domination.

I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel – Everyone has already talked about why this is so great! I think it is a rollicking, nauseating, can't-look-away dissection of how sex becomes transaction, a commodity to be traded for cultural capital ...

Testo Junkie by Paul B. Preciado – This has the hottest sex scene I have ever read.

The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan – I have read and reread this book many, many times. Essential, piercing, beautiful.

Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher – A transformative read that reminded me just how powerful of a lens art can be to reveal the maladies of our time – and that a critic's job should be no less than to excavate that revelatory potential.

Cruising Utopia by José Esteban Muñoz – Futurity is a fraught concept in times of political despair. Muñoz makes it real and beautiful, and reminds me to never settle for less.

Queer Phenomenology by Sara Ahmed – A framework for thinking about queerness as spatially oriented, as being about who we turn towards and who/what we turn away from.

Radical Intimacy by Sophie K. Rosa – An incisive exploration of forms of intimacy that resist the dictates of capitalism.

Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again by Katherine Angel – A clarifying problematisation of 'consent' as the silver bullet for sex under patriarchy.

Electric Dreams by Heather Parry – A 404 Inkling I am honoured to share a shelf with, which explores the politics of (imagined) robotic bedfellows.

Want to dig deeper into the politics of the sex scene? Join us to welcome Xuanlin's book into the world next week, March 12th!