THE RED CRITIQUE: Marxist Theory and Critique of the Contemporary

Donald Morton, pedagogue, thinker and a pioneer Marxist theorist of queer theory, died on January 29, 2023, in Boston. In his writings, Donald critiqued bourgeois queer theories and their hybrid conservative progressivism that represented the queer in floating cultural tropes outside history. He argued for a materialist analysis of queer that understood it in its history in class societies and its particular formation under cognitive capitalism. His arguments were highly controversial and involved him in long debates and critiques with culturalist queer theorists. Don was an exemplary teacher who taught the conceptual analysis of texts and their social conditions and critiqued affect pedagogies that he thought were reactionary. His pedagogical work was not limited to classroom teaching. He wrote against the neoliberal “student-centered” university and analyzed its economic ideologies that concealed the conversion of the university from a place of critique to a corporation.