Frida Beckman (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748642618
- eISBN:
- 9780748671755
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642618.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
For Deleuze, sexuality is a force that can capture as well as liberate life. Its flows tend to be repressed and contained in specific forms while at the same time they retain revolutionary potential. ...
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For Deleuze, sexuality is a force that can capture as well as liberate life. Its flows tend to be repressed and contained in specific forms while at the same time they retain revolutionary potential. There is immense power in the thousand sexes of desiring-machines, and sexuality is seen as a source of becoming. This book gathers prominent Deleuze scholars to explore the restricting and liberating forces of sexuality in relation to a spread of central themes in Deleuze's philosophy, including politics, psychoanalysis and friendship as well as specific topics such as the body-machine, disability, feminism and erotics.Less
For Deleuze, sexuality is a force that can capture as well as liberate life. Its flows tend to be repressed and contained in specific forms while at the same time they retain revolutionary potential. There is immense power in the thousand sexes of desiring-machines, and sexuality is seen as a source of becoming. This book gathers prominent Deleuze scholars to explore the restricting and liberating forces of sexuality in relation to a spread of central themes in Deleuze's philosophy, including politics, psychoanalysis and friendship as well as specific topics such as the body-machine, disability, feminism and erotics.
James A. Steintrager
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231151580
- eISBN:
- 9780231540872
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231151580.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all? Radical French libertines experimented clandestinely with this idea during ...
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What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all? Radical French libertines experimented clandestinely with this idea during the Enlightenment. In explicit novels, dialogues, poems, and engravings, they wrenched pleasure free from religion and morality, from politics, aesthetics, anatomy, and finally reason itself, and imagined how such a world would be desirable, legitimate, rapturous—and potentially horrific. Laying out the logic and willful illogic of radical libertinage, this book ties the Enlightenment engagement with sexual license to the expansion of print, empiricism, the revival of skepticism, the fashionable arts and lifestyles of the Ancien Régime, and the rise and decline of absolutism. It examines the consequences of imagining sexual pleasure as sovereign power and a law unto itself across a range of topics, including sodomy, the science of sexual difference, political philosophy, aesthetics, and race. It also analyzes the roots of radical claims for pleasure in earlier licentious satire and their echoes in appeals for sexual liberation in the 1960s and beyond.Less
What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all? Radical French libertines experimented clandestinely with this idea during the Enlightenment. In explicit novels, dialogues, poems, and engravings, they wrenched pleasure free from religion and morality, from politics, aesthetics, anatomy, and finally reason itself, and imagined how such a world would be desirable, legitimate, rapturous—and potentially horrific. Laying out the logic and willful illogic of radical libertinage, this book ties the Enlightenment engagement with sexual license to the expansion of print, empiricism, the revival of skepticism, the fashionable arts and lifestyles of the Ancien Régime, and the rise and decline of absolutism. It examines the consequences of imagining sexual pleasure as sovereign power and a law unto itself across a range of topics, including sodomy, the science of sexual difference, political philosophy, aesthetics, and race. It also analyzes the roots of radical claims for pleasure in earlier licentious satire and their echoes in appeals for sexual liberation in the 1960s and beyond.
Lauren Shohet
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199295890
- eISBN:
- 9780191594311
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199295890.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter shows that mid‐ and late‐ seventeenth‐century booksellers' catalogues designate public theatrical masques, Interregnum closet pieces, and Restoration operas as “masques.” Masques were ...
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This chapter shows that mid‐ and late‐ seventeenth‐century booksellers' catalogues designate public theatrical masques, Interregnum closet pieces, and Restoration operas as “masques.” Masques were more than nonce works, instead retaining commercial appeal long past their performance dates. This chapter cross‐reads masques from different venues, contained within plays, intertextually mentioned in pageants, parodied in ballads, and recorded in gossip. Masques' habitual intertextual allusiveness contributes to the genre's self‐conscious explorations of how drama constitutes authority, their canniness contradicting New Historicist symptomatic readings. Case studies include two intertextually related masques of 1617–18 (White's Cupid's Banishment, produced by a London girls' school, and Jonson's courtly Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue); a cluster of 1630s masques of temperance (Milton's Ludlow masque Comus, Davenant's courtly Luminalia, Thomas Nabbes's public theatrical masque Microcosmus, Thomas Heywood's Lord Mayor's show Porta Pietatis); and Shirley's spectacular 1634 Triumph of Peace.Less
This chapter shows that mid‐ and late‐ seventeenth‐century booksellers' catalogues designate public theatrical masques, Interregnum closet pieces, and Restoration operas as “masques.” Masques were more than nonce works, instead retaining commercial appeal long past their performance dates. This chapter cross‐reads masques from different venues, contained within plays, intertextually mentioned in pageants, parodied in ballads, and recorded in gossip. Masques' habitual intertextual allusiveness contributes to the genre's self‐conscious explorations of how drama constitutes authority, their canniness contradicting New Historicist symptomatic readings. Case studies include two intertextually related masques of 1617–18 (White's Cupid's Banishment, produced by a London girls' school, and Jonson's courtly Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue); a cluster of 1630s masques of temperance (Milton's Ludlow masque Comus, Davenant's courtly Luminalia, Thomas Nabbes's public theatrical masque Microcosmus, Thomas Heywood's Lord Mayor's show Porta Pietatis); and Shirley's spectacular 1634 Triumph of Peace.
Frida Beckman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748645923
- eISBN:
- 9780748689170
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748645923.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Mapping both historical and contemporary configurations of the sexual body along with its functions and sensations, this book identifies disabling conceptions and constructions of pleasure while also ...
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Mapping both historical and contemporary configurations of the sexual body along with its functions and sensations, this book identifies disabling conceptions and constructions of pleasure while also searching for the possibility of claiming sexual pleasure as a constructive and politically enabling notion today. In the face of the way in which Deleuze’s theory of desire builds on a rejection of the usefulness of pleasure, this book works to construct a Deleuzian theory of sexuality that is inclusive of pleasure. Intervening into contemporary fields of research including posthumanist-, disability-, animal-, and feminist studies as well as into current critiques of capitalism and consumerism, Between Desire and Pleasure works to contribute to cultural, conceptual, and political debates about sexuality.Less
Mapping both historical and contemporary configurations of the sexual body along with its functions and sensations, this book identifies disabling conceptions and constructions of pleasure while also searching for the possibility of claiming sexual pleasure as a constructive and politically enabling notion today. In the face of the way in which Deleuze’s theory of desire builds on a rejection of the usefulness of pleasure, this book works to construct a Deleuzian theory of sexuality that is inclusive of pleasure. Intervening into contemporary fields of research including posthumanist-, disability-, animal-, and feminist studies as well as into current critiques of capitalism and consumerism, Between Desire and Pleasure works to contribute to cultural, conceptual, and political debates about sexuality.
Aaron Schuster
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262528597
- eISBN:
- 9780262334150
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262528597.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is ...
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Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two formidable figures of post-war French thought. Though the encounter with psychoanalysis deeply marked Deleuze’s work, we are yet to have a critical account of the very different postures he adopted toward psychoanalysis, and especially Lacanian theory, throughout his career. In this book Schuster tackles this tangled relationship head on. The result is neither a Lacanian reading of Deleuze nor a Deleuzian reading of Lacan but rather a systematic and comparative analysis that identifies concerns common to both thinkers and their ultimately incompatible ways of addressing them. Schuster focuses on drive and desire—the strange, convoluted relationship of human beings to the forces that move them from within—“the trouble with pleasure.” Along the way, Schuster offers his own conceptual analyses and examples. In the “Critique of Pure Complaint” he provides a philosophy of complaining, ranging from Freud’s theory of neurosis to Spinoza’s intellectual complaint of God and the Deleuzian great complaint. Schuster goes on to elaborate a theory of love as “mutually compatible symptoms”; an original philosophical history of pleasure, including a hypothetical Heideggerian treatise and a Platonic theory of true pleasure; and an exploration of the 1920s “literature of the death drive,” including Thomas Mann, Italo Svevo, and Blaise Cendrars.Less
Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two formidable figures of post-war French thought. Though the encounter with psychoanalysis deeply marked Deleuze’s work, we are yet to have a critical account of the very different postures he adopted toward psychoanalysis, and especially Lacanian theory, throughout his career. In this book Schuster tackles this tangled relationship head on. The result is neither a Lacanian reading of Deleuze nor a Deleuzian reading of Lacan but rather a systematic and comparative analysis that identifies concerns common to both thinkers and their ultimately incompatible ways of addressing them. Schuster focuses on drive and desire—the strange, convoluted relationship of human beings to the forces that move them from within—“the trouble with pleasure.” Along the way, Schuster offers his own conceptual analyses and examples. In the “Critique of Pure Complaint” he provides a philosophy of complaining, ranging from Freud’s theory of neurosis to Spinoza’s intellectual complaint of God and the Deleuzian great complaint. Schuster goes on to elaborate a theory of love as “mutually compatible symptoms”; an original philosophical history of pleasure, including a hypothetical Heideggerian treatise and a Platonic theory of true pleasure; and an exploration of the 1920s “literature of the death drive,” including Thomas Mann, Italo Svevo, and Blaise Cendrars.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804756877
- eISBN:
- 9780804768375
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804756877.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
Excision in all of its forms is distributed on the African continent along two axes intersecting in Sudan: an east-west axis from Yemen to Senegal and a north-south axis from Egypt to Tanzania. ...
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Excision in all of its forms is distributed on the African continent along two axes intersecting in Sudan: an east-west axis from Yemen to Senegal and a north-south axis from Egypt to Tanzania. Today, infibulation is still practiced in parts of Somalia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mali, and Chad, and Mali. Hence, “the sealed condition” arising from infibulation is evoked as a common practice, if not a rite of passage per se, by Somali women writers such as Saïda Hagi-Dirie Herzi. Infibulation is known as Sudanese circumcision in Egypt and pharaonic circumcision in other parts of Africa, particularly Sudan. Herzi's short story “Against the Pleasure Principle” (1992) conflates infibulation in the Horn of Africa, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Western obstetrics. It not only raises the issue of obstetrical complications, but also indirectly tackles female sexual pleasure. In her text, Herzi engages Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle ([1919] 1953).Less
Excision in all of its forms is distributed on the African continent along two axes intersecting in Sudan: an east-west axis from Yemen to Senegal and a north-south axis from Egypt to Tanzania. Today, infibulation is still practiced in parts of Somalia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mali, and Chad, and Mali. Hence, “the sealed condition” arising from infibulation is evoked as a common practice, if not a rite of passage per se, by Somali women writers such as Saïda Hagi-Dirie Herzi. Infibulation is known as Sudanese circumcision in Egypt and pharaonic circumcision in other parts of Africa, particularly Sudan. Herzi's short story “Against the Pleasure Principle” (1992) conflates infibulation in the Horn of Africa, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Western obstetrics. It not only raises the issue of obstetrical complications, but also indirectly tackles female sexual pleasure. In her text, Herzi engages Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle ([1919] 1953).
Terence Irwin
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195086454
- eISBN:
- 9780199833306
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195086457.003.0019
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
This chapter focuses on how some crucial doctrines of the Republic are then developed in the Philebus. Firstly, the problem of whether pleasure or intelligence is the good in a more articulated way ...
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This chapter focuses on how some crucial doctrines of the Republic are then developed in the Philebus. Firstly, the problem of whether pleasure or intelligence is the good in a more articulated way than the one of the Republic is treated. Secondly, the different types of knowledge and their role in the good life are examined. Thirdly, more generally, it is discussed how the Philebus presents a more exhaustive and precise account of what are, in Plato’s view, intelligence, pleasure, and good. Finally, it is underlined how the Philebus is important for understanding the connection between Plato’s and Aristotle’s ethics.Less
This chapter focuses on how some crucial doctrines of the Republic are then developed in the Philebus. Firstly, the problem of whether pleasure or intelligence is the good in a more articulated way than the one of the Republic is treated. Secondly, the different types of knowledge and their role in the good life are examined. Thirdly, more generally, it is discussed how the Philebus presents a more exhaustive and precise account of what are, in Plato’s view, intelligence, pleasure, and good. Finally, it is underlined how the Philebus is important for understanding the connection between Plato’s and Aristotle’s ethics.
Terence Irwin
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195086454
- eISBN:
- 9780199833306
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195086457.003.0020
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
The last chapter analyses how Plato’s ethical views are developed in the later dialogues (the Philebus, the Statesman, and the Laws). In the last dialogue Plato tries to harmonise the different ...
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The last chapter analyses how Plato’s ethical views are developed in the later dialogues (the Philebus, the Statesman, and the Laws). In the last dialogue Plato tries to harmonise the different virtues. The relations between pleasure, happiness, and desire are analysed. Finally, the role played by the cardinal virtues in the later dialogues is examined, in particular, a certain attention toward the condition of wisdom and how it is related to the other virtues.Less
The last chapter analyses how Plato’s ethical views are developed in the later dialogues (the Philebus, the Statesman, and the Laws). In the last dialogue Plato tries to harmonise the different virtues. The relations between pleasure, happiness, and desire are analysed. Finally, the role played by the cardinal virtues in the later dialogues is examined, in particular, a certain attention toward the condition of wisdom and how it is related to the other virtues.
Karolyn Steffens
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780748694266
- eISBN:
- 9781474412391
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694266.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Foregrounding intersections between Ford and Freud, this chapter analyzes Ford’s Impressionism alongside Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Tracing the development of Ford’s Impressionism through ...
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Foregrounding intersections between Ford and Freud, this chapter analyzes Ford’s Impressionism alongside Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Tracing the development of Ford’s Impressionism through episodes from No Enemy, ‘True Love and a GCM’, and Parade’s End, the compositional evolution that emerges from this comparison displays how Ford’s Impressionism becomes an aesthetic of duality, mirroring Tietjens who becomes the paradigmatic homo duplex in the trenches. Instead of merely representing the violence of war (Thanatos), these three texts illustrate how both Eros and Thanatos become constitutive of the trauma of the Great War for Ford. His Impressionism evolves into one that defines traumatized consciousness as interpenetrated by both Eros and Thanatos, an aesthetic that illuminates the frequently overlooked intersections between sexuality and violence in Freud’s theories of trauma.Less
Foregrounding intersections between Ford and Freud, this chapter analyzes Ford’s Impressionism alongside Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Tracing the development of Ford’s Impressionism through episodes from No Enemy, ‘True Love and a GCM’, and Parade’s End, the compositional evolution that emerges from this comparison displays how Ford’s Impressionism becomes an aesthetic of duality, mirroring Tietjens who becomes the paradigmatic homo duplex in the trenches. Instead of merely representing the violence of war (Thanatos), these three texts illustrate how both Eros and Thanatos become constitutive of the trauma of the Great War for Ford. His Impressionism evolves into one that defines traumatized consciousness as interpenetrated by both Eros and Thanatos, an aesthetic that illuminates the frequently overlooked intersections between sexuality and violence in Freud’s theories of trauma.
Terence Irwin
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195086454
- eISBN:
- 9780199833306
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195086457.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
The purpose of chapter 7 is to outline the role played by the Gorgias in the development of Plato’s ethical views. To start with, the characteristics and the peculiarities of rhetoric are evaluated. ...
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The purpose of chapter 7 is to outline the role played by the Gorgias in the development of Plato’s ethical views. To start with, the characteristics and the peculiarities of rhetoric are evaluated. Then, it is presented how Socrates, although he attacks Callicles’ hedonism, maintains an instrumentalist conception according to which virtues are means for achieving happiness. In conclusion, Socrates’ adaptive doctrine of happiness, which appears to imply that happiness consists in the satisfaction of one’s desires, is discussed.Less
The purpose of chapter 7 is to outline the role played by the Gorgias in the development of Plato’s ethical views. To start with, the characteristics and the peculiarities of rhetoric are evaluated. Then, it is presented how Socrates, although he attacks Callicles’ hedonism, maintains an instrumentalist conception according to which virtues are means for achieving happiness. In conclusion, Socrates’ adaptive doctrine of happiness, which appears to imply that happiness consists in the satisfaction of one’s desires, is discussed.
Terence Irwin
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195086454
- eISBN:
- 9780199833306
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195086457.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
Chapter 8 contains a detailed discussion of the consequences that may be inferred by the doctrines discussed in the Gorgias. The position of the Gorgias recalls that of the Protagoras. Then, it is ...
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Chapter 8 contains a detailed discussion of the consequences that may be inferred by the doctrines discussed in the Gorgias. The position of the Gorgias recalls that of the Protagoras. Then, it is claimed that, although the Gorgias tries to refute the earlier dialogue’s hedonist view, Plato nevertheless still holds that happiness is the state in which all desires are fulfilled. Consequently, virtues are considered valuable only because they are means to attain a further end. Finally, it may be suggested that the Gorgias makes a sort of transition from the early dialogues to the mature position of the Republic.Less
Chapter 8 contains a detailed discussion of the consequences that may be inferred by the doctrines discussed in the Gorgias. The position of the Gorgias recalls that of the Protagoras. Then, it is claimed that, although the Gorgias tries to refute the earlier dialogue’s hedonist view, Plato nevertheless still holds that happiness is the state in which all desires are fulfilled. Consequently, virtues are considered valuable only because they are means to attain a further end. Finally, it may be suggested that the Gorgias makes a sort of transition from the early dialogues to the mature position of the Republic.
Louis Narens and Brian Skyrms
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198856450
- eISBN:
- 9780191889721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198856450.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Does neurobiology deliver a Utilitarian measurement of pleasure and pain? Much remains unknown, but enough is known to show that neurobiology just makes the problems more complex and difficult.
Does neurobiology deliver a Utilitarian measurement of pleasure and pain? Much remains unknown, but enough is known to show that neurobiology just makes the problems more complex and difficult.
John Franceschina
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199754298
- eISBN:
- 9780199949878
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199754298.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, Dance, Popular
Hermes Pan stages dances for James Cagney in Never Steal Anything Small at Universal-International Pictures before starting work on Porgy and Bess for Samuel Goldwyn. He then moves on to television ...
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Hermes Pan stages dances for James Cagney in Never Steal Anything Small at Universal-International Pictures before starting work on Porgy and Bess for Samuel Goldwyn. He then moves on to television where he wins an Emmy Award for his choreography for An Evening with Fred Astaire. He returns to Twentieth Century-Fox to choreograph The Blue Angel and Can-Can, the film that scandalized Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev during his visit to the United States. For Astaire, Pan staged the dance sequences in The Pleasure of His Company at Paramount and Another Evening with Fred Astaire and Astaire Time for television. For Ross Hunter, Pan choreographed a $4,000,000 production of Flower Drum Song created a spectacular dream ballet to the music of “Sunday.”Less
Hermes Pan stages dances for James Cagney in Never Steal Anything Small at Universal-International Pictures before starting work on Porgy and Bess for Samuel Goldwyn. He then moves on to television where he wins an Emmy Award for his choreography for An Evening with Fred Astaire. He returns to Twentieth Century-Fox to choreograph The Blue Angel and Can-Can, the film that scandalized Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev during his visit to the United States. For Astaire, Pan staged the dance sequences in The Pleasure of His Company at Paramount and Another Evening with Fred Astaire and Astaire Time for television. For Ross Hunter, Pan choreographed a $4,000,000 production of Flower Drum Song created a spectacular dream ballet to the music of “Sunday.”
Geoffrey R. Stone
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199812042
- eISBN:
- 9780199315888
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812042.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Novels of the eighteenth century often treat sexuality in highly explicit terms, by the standards even of our own time, and certainly by Victorian standards. This chapter addresses the topic of ...
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Novels of the eighteenth century often treat sexuality in highly explicit terms, by the standards even of our own time, and certainly by Victorian standards. This chapter addresses the topic of sexual explicitness, looking at the role of law in regulating artistic expression in our period. It argues that we tend today to think of a legal doctrine of obscenity as quite natural, regardless of whether we like the doctrine as it exists. However, the doctrine did not exist at all until the eighteenth century and did not have any real bite in English law until the publication of John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure in 1748. The chapter traces the origins of the obscenity doctrine in English law in order to show, among other things, that it was not a meaningful part of either English or American law until well after the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was enacted. Looking at the nonregulation of highly explicit literature by law informs us about our legal concepts, past and present.Less
Novels of the eighteenth century often treat sexuality in highly explicit terms, by the standards even of our own time, and certainly by Victorian standards. This chapter addresses the topic of sexual explicitness, looking at the role of law in regulating artistic expression in our period. It argues that we tend today to think of a legal doctrine of obscenity as quite natural, regardless of whether we like the doctrine as it exists. However, the doctrine did not exist at all until the eighteenth century and did not have any real bite in English law until the publication of John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure in 1748. The chapter traces the origins of the obscenity doctrine in English law in order to show, among other things, that it was not a meaningful part of either English or American law until well after the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was enacted. Looking at the nonregulation of highly explicit literature by law informs us about our legal concepts, past and present.
Tamara Chaplin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620429
- eISBN:
- 9781789629880
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620429.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Humour and radical politics are often seen as antithetical. When it comes to lesbian radicalism, this perception is even more extreme. Utopias, on the other hand, are most often places of, if not ...
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Humour and radical politics are often seen as antithetical. When it comes to lesbian radicalism, this perception is even more extreme. Utopias, on the other hand, are most often places of, if not necessarily humour and pleasure, than at least harmony and contentment. Utopian politics in which the comedic is key have figured as an integral part of the most successful strains of French lesbian radicalism since the early 1970s. This chapter brings three “moments” in the history of French lesbian radicalism into dialogue: 1974, via a utopian manifesto written by a member of the Gouines Rouges (one of the first French lesbian radical groups); 1980, via the Lesbian Radical Front; and 1989, via a socio-cultural initiative now known as BagdamEspaceLesbien. These moments show not only the importance of “utopian gaiety” as “a political value for progressive social activism,” but also demonstrate that without attention to the pleasure, French lesbian radicalism, whether as a political agenda or as a social movement, has—thus far—simply not been sustainable. This chapter suggests that paying attention to lesbian humour and pleasure can help us better understand the complicated relationship between radicalism and queer utopias, writ large.Less
Humour and radical politics are often seen as antithetical. When it comes to lesbian radicalism, this perception is even more extreme. Utopias, on the other hand, are most often places of, if not necessarily humour and pleasure, than at least harmony and contentment. Utopian politics in which the comedic is key have figured as an integral part of the most successful strains of French lesbian radicalism since the early 1970s. This chapter brings three “moments” in the history of French lesbian radicalism into dialogue: 1974, via a utopian manifesto written by a member of the Gouines Rouges (one of the first French lesbian radical groups); 1980, via the Lesbian Radical Front; and 1989, via a socio-cultural initiative now known as BagdamEspaceLesbien. These moments show not only the importance of “utopian gaiety” as “a political value for progressive social activism,” but also demonstrate that without attention to the pleasure, French lesbian radicalism, whether as a political agenda or as a social movement, has—thus far—simply not been sustainable. This chapter suggests that paying attention to lesbian humour and pleasure can help us better understand the complicated relationship between radicalism and queer utopias, writ large.
Anya M. Wallace and Jillian Hernandez
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042645
- eISBN:
- 9780252051494
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042645.003.0016
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
The Book of Joy is an exhibition for which we have compiled an eclectic collection of images, poems, and interview transcripts culled from our research on queer young black women’s sexualities and ...
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The Book of Joy is an exhibition for which we have compiled an eclectic collection of images, poems, and interview transcripts culled from our research on queer young black women’s sexualities and arts-based community work. Taking our cue from the practice and passion of Zanele Muholi, a black queer South African artist and activist based in Johannesburg who generates portraits of queer communities, we purposefully stray from our scholarly essay writing practice here in order to situate an evocative and more direct accounting of black queer young women’s erotics within the larger framework of this anthology. Although the work of our participants is nevertheless mediated through our process of collection, selection, framing, and ordering, we, like Zanele, believe that the creative expression and documentation of queer black lives is a significant politic. This project stems from the desire to witness and consume representations of Black female sexuality that are diverse, full, and comprehensive. In curating this exhibition, we draw on our action research designed to facilitate collective learning experiences with young Black women and girls in regards to visual culture, sex, sexuality, and pleasure. When the discussion of black queer young women’s lives is either non-existent or saturated by the overwhelming realities of harassment, trauma, depression, and violence that can also mark them, a focus on pleasure becomes an urgent project.Less
The Book of Joy is an exhibition for which we have compiled an eclectic collection of images, poems, and interview transcripts culled from our research on queer young black women’s sexualities and arts-based community work. Taking our cue from the practice and passion of Zanele Muholi, a black queer South African artist and activist based in Johannesburg who generates portraits of queer communities, we purposefully stray from our scholarly essay writing practice here in order to situate an evocative and more direct accounting of black queer young women’s erotics within the larger framework of this anthology. Although the work of our participants is nevertheless mediated through our process of collection, selection, framing, and ordering, we, like Zanele, believe that the creative expression and documentation of queer black lives is a significant politic. This project stems from the desire to witness and consume representations of Black female sexuality that are diverse, full, and comprehensive. In curating this exhibition, we draw on our action research designed to facilitate collective learning experiences with young Black women and girls in regards to visual culture, sex, sexuality, and pleasure. When the discussion of black queer young women’s lives is either non-existent or saturated by the overwhelming realities of harassment, trauma, depression, and violence that can also mark them, a focus on pleasure becomes an urgent project.
Jessica Gildersleeve
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474458641
- eISBN:
- 9781474477147
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474458641.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter recognises that while several authors in the extant criticism have used various lenses of critical theory through which to analyse Bowen’s work, a case for Bowen as a theorist herself ...
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This chapter recognises that while several authors in the extant criticism have used various lenses of critical theory through which to analyse Bowen’s work, a case for Bowen as a theorist herself has not yet been made. Through an analysis of Bowen’s critical essays, reviews, and depictions of reading and writing in her fiction, this chapter proposes a logic of literary theory as it emerges in her work. Bowen’s theory of reading does anticipate, in some ways, poststructuralist theory as it appears in the work of Roland Barthes, particularly in terms of her syntactical evocations of trauma. Where her work differs (or defers) from theirs, however, is in her insistence upon a kind of mindless and spontaneous memory-work which describes the impact of the reader and the text upon each other and the production of pleasure engendered through this relationship. It is in the process of this mutual engagement, Bowen’s work suggests, that each comes into being. This essay will thus argue for the innovation present in Bowen’s understanding of reading and writing as an anticipation and an inflection of later poststructuralist theory.Less
This chapter recognises that while several authors in the extant criticism have used various lenses of critical theory through which to analyse Bowen’s work, a case for Bowen as a theorist herself has not yet been made. Through an analysis of Bowen’s critical essays, reviews, and depictions of reading and writing in her fiction, this chapter proposes a logic of literary theory as it emerges in her work. Bowen’s theory of reading does anticipate, in some ways, poststructuralist theory as it appears in the work of Roland Barthes, particularly in terms of her syntactical evocations of trauma. Where her work differs (or defers) from theirs, however, is in her insistence upon a kind of mindless and spontaneous memory-work which describes the impact of the reader and the text upon each other and the production of pleasure engendered through this relationship. It is in the process of this mutual engagement, Bowen’s work suggests, that each comes into being. This essay will thus argue for the innovation present in Bowen’s understanding of reading and writing as an anticipation and an inflection of later poststructuralist theory.
Eliza Cubitt
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526123503
- eISBN:
- 9781526141972
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526123503.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter places the leisure pursuits of female characters in Harkness’s fiction in a broader context of gendered cultural anxieties about working-class leisure activities in the late nineteenth ...
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This chapter places the leisure pursuits of female characters in Harkness’s fiction in a broader context of gendered cultural anxieties about working-class leisure activities in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on two of Harkness’s novels, A City Girl and In Darkest London, it argues that, for working women in Harkness’s fiction, leisure may be difficult to access and often becomes another form of work. Comparing Harkness’s characters to women in other contemporary texts such as Liza of Lambeth, it shows how leisure pursuits often reflect and reproduce social dangers and structures of oppression for unmarried working-class women.Less
This chapter places the leisure pursuits of female characters in Harkness’s fiction in a broader context of gendered cultural anxieties about working-class leisure activities in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on two of Harkness’s novels, A City Girl and In Darkest London, it argues that, for working women in Harkness’s fiction, leisure may be difficult to access and often becomes another form of work. Comparing Harkness’s characters to women in other contemporary texts such as Liza of Lambeth, it shows how leisure pursuits often reflect and reproduce social dangers and structures of oppression for unmarried working-class women.
Gillian Knoll
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474428521
- eISBN:
- 9781474481175
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474428521.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Conceiving Desire in Lyly and Shakespeare explores the role of the mind in creating erotic experience on the early modern stage. To “conceive” desire is to acknowledge the generative potential of the ...
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Conceiving Desire in Lyly and Shakespeare explores the role of the mind in creating erotic experience on the early modern stage. To “conceive” desire is to acknowledge the generative potential of the erotic imagination, its capacity to impart form and make meaning out of the most elusive experiences. Drawing from cognitive and philosophical approaches, this book advances a new methodology for analysing how early modern plays dramatize inward erotic experience.
Grounded in cognitive theories about the metaphorical nature of thought, Conceiving Desire in Lyly and Shakespeare traces the contours of three conceptual metaphors—motion, space, and creativity—that shape erotic desire in plays by John Lyly and William Shakespeare. Although Lyly and Shakespeare wrote for different types of theatres and only partially-overlapping audiences, both dramatists created characters who speak erotic language at considerable length and in extraordinary depth. Their metaphors do more than merely narrate or express eros; they constitute characters’ erotic experiences.
Each of the book’s three sections explores a fundamental conceptual metaphor, first its philosophical underpinnings and then its capacity for dramatizing erotic experience in Lyly’s and Shakespeare’s plays. Conceiving Desire in Lyly and Shakespeare provides a literary and linguistic analysis of metaphor that credits the role of cognition in the experience of erotic desire, even of pleasure itself.Less
Conceiving Desire in Lyly and Shakespeare explores the role of the mind in creating erotic experience on the early modern stage. To “conceive” desire is to acknowledge the generative potential of the erotic imagination, its capacity to impart form and make meaning out of the most elusive experiences. Drawing from cognitive and philosophical approaches, this book advances a new methodology for analysing how early modern plays dramatize inward erotic experience.
Grounded in cognitive theories about the metaphorical nature of thought, Conceiving Desire in Lyly and Shakespeare traces the contours of three conceptual metaphors—motion, space, and creativity—that shape erotic desire in plays by John Lyly and William Shakespeare. Although Lyly and Shakespeare wrote for different types of theatres and only partially-overlapping audiences, both dramatists created characters who speak erotic language at considerable length and in extraordinary depth. Their metaphors do more than merely narrate or express eros; they constitute characters’ erotic experiences.
Each of the book’s three sections explores a fundamental conceptual metaphor, first its philosophical underpinnings and then its capacity for dramatizing erotic experience in Lyly’s and Shakespeare’s plays. Conceiving Desire in Lyly and Shakespeare provides a literary and linguistic analysis of metaphor that credits the role of cognition in the experience of erotic desire, even of pleasure itself.
Brett Mills
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637515
- eISBN:
- 9780748671229
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637515.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This chapter argues the sitcom is an especially important genre for thinking about television audiences because comedy is a form of communication that relies on audience response for its effect. The ...
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This chapter argues the sitcom is an especially important genre for thinking about television audiences because comedy is a form of communication that relies on audience response for its effect. The chapter examines sitcom tropes such as the laugh track, to examine how the audience is signalled within the genre. It also explores audience reactions via complaints, and examines what such complaints tell us about audience expectations for the genre. This is also linked to issues of broadcasting regulations. The chapter draws on primary research with comedy audiences carried out for this book.Less
This chapter argues the sitcom is an especially important genre for thinking about television audiences because comedy is a form of communication that relies on audience response for its effect. The chapter examines sitcom tropes such as the laugh track, to examine how the audience is signalled within the genre. It also explores audience reactions via complaints, and examines what such complaints tell us about audience expectations for the genre. This is also linked to issues of broadcasting regulations. The chapter draws on primary research with comedy audiences carried out for this book.
