10.17192/meta.2020.14.8021 Chamas, Sophie Sophie Chamas Reading Marx in Beirut: Disorganised Study and the Politics of Queer Utopia Middle East - Topics + Arguments : Vol 14 (2020) Philipps-Universität Marburg 2020 Marxism utopia study Lebanon queerness leftism Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) 2020-07-14 2020-07-13 en JournalArticle https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0003/2020/240/8021 urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-0003-2020-240-80214 https://journals.uni-marburg.de/0003/2020/240/8021/8021.png 2196-629X application/pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 This article draws on ethnographic research carried out with Marxist reading groups run by a Lebanese revolutionary socialist organization. I examine the labor that Marxist theoretical practice was doing in a political conjuncture widely viewed as post-Marxist , discussing the relationship between theory and affect, and the role that affective infrastructures play in maintaining and reproducing social movements and political organisations. Drawing on Moten and Harney, I frame this intellectual labor as a form of dissonant , disorganized study - a mode of preparing for revolution by being together in brokenness and routinely generating a commitment to a particular political horizon. This form of political praxis as study unfolded within a Lebanese activist scene dominated by a pragmatic conception of politics, within which the critical labor of the radical and revolutionary left was largely considered sterile , mired in something akin to what Berlant calls cruel optimism. Drawing on Munoz, his conceptualisation of the politics of queer utopia, and his defence of utopian imaginativeness, I argue that for radical and revolutionary leftists in counter-revolutionary times, cultivating solidarity and camaraderie by maintaining a space of study that could enable technologies of both self and collective constituted a productive political act. 2196-629X Middle East - Topics + Arguments Vol 14 (2020)