Patrick R. Mullen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199746699
- eISBN:
- 9780199950270
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199746699.003.0000
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The introduction elaborates the key concepts of the book: homosexuality, value, and labor. It contextualizes the importance of these concepts for modern Irish history and culture. Furthermore, it ...
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The introduction elaborates the key concepts of the book: homosexuality, value, and labor. It contextualizes the importance of these concepts for modern Irish history and culture. Furthermore, it argues that the study brings together currently alienated critical discussions that both trace themselves to Foucault’s History of Sexuality: queer theory that has developed from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s reading of Foucault and studies of empire engaged with the work of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The chapter makes connections among queer theory, Irish studies, modernist studies, and theories of empire.Less
The introduction elaborates the key concepts of the book: homosexuality, value, and labor. It contextualizes the importance of these concepts for modern Irish history and culture. Furthermore, it argues that the study brings together currently alienated critical discussions that both trace themselves to Foucault’s History of Sexuality: queer theory that has developed from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s reading of Foucault and studies of empire engaged with the work of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. The chapter makes connections among queer theory, Irish studies, modernist studies, and theories of empire.
Kathy Peiss
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199790562
- eISBN:
- 9780199896820
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790562.003.0020
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter discusses how the history of sexuality was virtually absent from the Mississippi Valley Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) before the 1970s and did ...
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This chapter discusses how the history of sexuality was virtually absent from the Mississippi Valley Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) before the 1970s and did not regularly appear until the 1990s. Historians were slower to take up this topic than practitioners of several other disciplines, and some historians presented their findings in other vehicles. In the Journal of American History, the first article did not appear until 1968; the first session at an annual meeting followed in 1971, but very little else showed up in either site during the next two decades. Acceptance and legitimacy within the OAH did not come until the 1990s. The chapter discusses what more needs to be done to grow this field, including a recommendation that the profession should define historical significance.Less
This chapter discusses how the history of sexuality was virtually absent from the Mississippi Valley Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) before the 1970s and did not regularly appear until the 1990s. Historians were slower to take up this topic than practitioners of several other disciplines, and some historians presented their findings in other vehicles. In the Journal of American History, the first article did not appear until 1968; the first session at an annual meeting followed in 1971, but very little else showed up in either site during the next two decades. Acceptance and legitimacy within the OAH did not come until the 1990s. The chapter discusses what more needs to be done to grow this field, including a recommendation that the profession should define historical significance.
Penelope Deutscher
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780231176415
- eISBN:
- 9780231544559
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231176415.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Revisits a well-known work, Foucault’s History of Sexuality volume one, from the perspective of its consideration of procreation. Offers a re-reading of the work. Despite Foucault’s discussion of the ...
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Revisits a well-known work, Foucault’s History of Sexuality volume one, from the perspective of its consideration of procreation. Offers a re-reading of the work. Despite Foucault’s discussion of the deadly aspects of biopolitics and his interest in the role of reproduction in biopolitics, he does not consider procreation from this ‘deadly’ perspective. The chapter argues that we can draw differently on Foucauldian resources so as to correct for this missing analysis, and in so doing, also shed light on modern representations of maternal agency all the way through to a new analysis of contemporary abortion warsLess
Revisits a well-known work, Foucault’s History of Sexuality volume one, from the perspective of its consideration of procreation. Offers a re-reading of the work. Despite Foucault’s discussion of the deadly aspects of biopolitics and his interest in the role of reproduction in biopolitics, he does not consider procreation from this ‘deadly’ perspective. The chapter argues that we can draw differently on Foucauldian resources so as to correct for this missing analysis, and in so doing, also shed light on modern representations of maternal agency all the way through to a new analysis of contemporary abortion wars
Laura Doan
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226001586
- eISBN:
- 9780226001753
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226001753.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
For decades, the history of sexuality has been a multidisciplinary project serving competing agendas. Lesbian, gay, and queer scholars have produced powerful narratives by tracing the homosexual or ...
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For decades, the history of sexuality has been a multidisciplinary project serving competing agendas. Lesbian, gay, and queer scholars have produced powerful narratives by tracing the homosexual or queer subject as continuous or discontinuous. Yet organizing historical work around categories of identity as normal or abnormal often obscures how sexual matters were known or talked about in the past. Set against the backdrop of women’s work experiences, friendships, and communities during World War I, this book draws on a substantial body of new archival material to expose the roadblocks still present in current practices and imagine new alternatives. It clarifies the ethical value and political purpose of identity history—and indeed its very capacity to give rise to innovative practices borne of sustained exchange between queer studies and critical history. The book insists on taking seriously the imperative to step outside the logic of identity to address questions as yet unasked about the modern sexual past.Less
For decades, the history of sexuality has been a multidisciplinary project serving competing agendas. Lesbian, gay, and queer scholars have produced powerful narratives by tracing the homosexual or queer subject as continuous or discontinuous. Yet organizing historical work around categories of identity as normal or abnormal often obscures how sexual matters were known or talked about in the past. Set against the backdrop of women’s work experiences, friendships, and communities during World War I, this book draws on a substantial body of new archival material to expose the roadblocks still present in current practices and imagine new alternatives. It clarifies the ethical value and political purpose of identity history—and indeed its very capacity to give rise to innovative practices borne of sustained exchange between queer studies and critical history. The book insists on taking seriously the imperative to step outside the logic of identity to address questions as yet unasked about the modern sexual past.
Lin Foxhall
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748613199
- eISBN:
- 9780748651016
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748613199.003.0008
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
The influence of Michel Foucault's writings on sexuality, especially The History of Sexuality (1978–1986) on subsequent studies of sexuality, gender and the discourses of power and oppression, has ...
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The influence of Michel Foucault's writings on sexuality, especially The History of Sexuality (1978–1986) on subsequent studies of sexuality, gender and the discourses of power and oppression, has been profound. In particular, Foucault has revolutionised the study of the social history of classical antiquity, where, with fifth–fourth century bc Athens, he ultimately decided to begin his investigations. He provides an analytical framework that can be expanded to explore the implications of sex and gender in the whole of social life. Foucault fashioned his analytical ‘techniques’ over a lifetime of archaeology, genealogy and ethics. This chapter presents a feminist critique of his History of Sexuality, and re-evaluates sexuality as a part of personal and political identity through the social acts of constructing gender, whose meanings change with context. It also examines the concepts of time and monumentality, the constitution and political construction of households, and how sexuality is related to socialisation and power.Less
The influence of Michel Foucault's writings on sexuality, especially The History of Sexuality (1978–1986) on subsequent studies of sexuality, gender and the discourses of power and oppression, has been profound. In particular, Foucault has revolutionised the study of the social history of classical antiquity, where, with fifth–fourth century bc Athens, he ultimately decided to begin his investigations. He provides an analytical framework that can be expanded to explore the implications of sex and gender in the whole of social life. Foucault fashioned his analytical ‘techniques’ over a lifetime of archaeology, genealogy and ethics. This chapter presents a feminist critique of his History of Sexuality, and re-evaluates sexuality as a part of personal and political identity through the social acts of constructing gender, whose meanings change with context. It also examines the concepts of time and monumentality, the constitution and political construction of households, and how sexuality is related to socialisation and power.
Ward Blanton
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231166911
- eISBN:
- 9780231536455
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231166911.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter argues that Michel Foucault missed a chance for a subversive genealogical encounter with Saint Paul. It describes Paul as the parrhesiast of experimental finitude in relation to care of ...
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This chapter argues that Michel Foucault missed a chance for a subversive genealogical encounter with Saint Paul. It describes Paul as the parrhesiast of experimental finitude in relation to care of the self and Christian metaphysics and compares him with the Greco-Roman philosophers—those peddlers of oddly paradoxical “spiritual exercises.” It examines historiographical traditionalism within Foucault's work and his failure to elucidate Paul in relation to the Hellenistic philosophers at the conclusion to the third volume of The History of Sexuality. It also discusses Foucault's assumption that the “religion” of Paulinism constitutes a difference that forecloses real comparative analysis, Paulinism being consigned to becoming the founder of a form of moral system in Christianity whose inventive machinations will engender a “self” constituted by its being turned against itself, at once constitutively guilty, fallen, and also profoundly normalized by the universalization of its underlying metaphysical narrative. Finally, it explores Theodore Zahn's Christian historiographical conservatism.Less
This chapter argues that Michel Foucault missed a chance for a subversive genealogical encounter with Saint Paul. It describes Paul as the parrhesiast of experimental finitude in relation to care of the self and Christian metaphysics and compares him with the Greco-Roman philosophers—those peddlers of oddly paradoxical “spiritual exercises.” It examines historiographical traditionalism within Foucault's work and his failure to elucidate Paul in relation to the Hellenistic philosophers at the conclusion to the third volume of The History of Sexuality. It also discusses Foucault's assumption that the “religion” of Paulinism constitutes a difference that forecloses real comparative analysis, Paulinism being consigned to becoming the founder of a form of moral system in Christianity whose inventive machinations will engender a “self” constituted by its being turned against itself, at once constitutively guilty, fallen, and also profoundly normalized by the universalization of its underlying metaphysical narrative. Finally, it explores Theodore Zahn's Christian historiographical conservatism.
Carrie Hamilton
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835197
- eISBN:
- 9781469601885
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807882511_hamilton.5
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This book presents an exploration of the history of sexuality in Cuba from the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 to the early twenty-first century. During these five decades the Cuban revolutionary ...
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This book presents an exploration of the history of sexuality in Cuba from the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 to the early twenty-first century. During these five decades the Cuban revolutionary regime intervened in citizens' sexual lives in myriad ways: through policy and legal reform, mass education programs, pronouncements of leaders on the relationship between good revolutionaries and good sexual subjects, incentives to encourage certain forms of sexual union, and repressive methods to discourage and punish others. Above all, the enormous economic, political, and social upheaval ushered in by the Revolution brought transformation to all areas of life, including the family, reproduction, sexual values, and intimate relationships. Cuban sexual ideology did not change overnight after 1959. New revolutionary values continued to coexist with prerevolutionary ones, in a potent and often contradictory mix of the old and the new.Less
This book presents an exploration of the history of sexuality in Cuba from the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 to the early twenty-first century. During these five decades the Cuban revolutionary regime intervened in citizens' sexual lives in myriad ways: through policy and legal reform, mass education programs, pronouncements of leaders on the relationship between good revolutionaries and good sexual subjects, incentives to encourage certain forms of sexual union, and repressive methods to discourage and punish others. Above all, the enormous economic, political, and social upheaval ushered in by the Revolution brought transformation to all areas of life, including the family, reproduction, sexual values, and intimate relationships. Cuban sexual ideology did not change overnight after 1959. New revolutionary values continued to coexist with prerevolutionary ones, in a potent and often contradictory mix of the old and the new.
Michael Lundblad
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199917570
- eISBN:
- 9780199332830
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199917570.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
In Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick argues that the discourse of sexuality shifted at the end of the nineteenth century from an emphasis on sexual acts to sexual identities. Sedgwick builds ...
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In Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick argues that the discourse of sexuality shifted at the end of the nineteenth century from an emphasis on sexual acts to sexual identities. Sedgwick builds upon Foucault's famous declaration that the “species” of the homosexual was born at that moment. But Sedgwick and others working on histories of sexuality in the United States have elided the discourse of the jungle: Darwinist-Freudian constructions of “the human” and “the animal” that redefine various behaviors in relation to animal instincts. This helps to explain why the discourse of sexuality shifted at the turn of the century, once heterosexuality was naturalized in the name of reproduction. Questions about human sexuality were soon framed within an evolutionary epistemology that was fundamentally new, but still in transition. After tracing the genealogy of the jungle through Darwin, Kipling, and Freud, this chapter focuses on alternative constructions of the relationship between animality and sexuality that are revealed in Progressive-Era texts.Less
In Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick argues that the discourse of sexuality shifted at the end of the nineteenth century from an emphasis on sexual acts to sexual identities. Sedgwick builds upon Foucault's famous declaration that the “species” of the homosexual was born at that moment. But Sedgwick and others working on histories of sexuality in the United States have elided the discourse of the jungle: Darwinist-Freudian constructions of “the human” and “the animal” that redefine various behaviors in relation to animal instincts. This helps to explain why the discourse of sexuality shifted at the turn of the century, once heterosexuality was naturalized in the name of reproduction. Questions about human sexuality were soon framed within an evolutionary epistemology that was fundamentally new, but still in transition. After tracing the genealogy of the jungle through Darwin, Kipling, and Freud, this chapter focuses on alternative constructions of the relationship between animality and sexuality that are revealed in Progressive-Era texts.
Birgit Lang, Joy Damousi, and Alison Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719099434
- eISBN:
- 9781526124098
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099434.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This volume tells the story of the case study genre at a time when it became the genre par excellence for discussing human sexuality across the humanities and the life sciences. A History of the Case ...
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This volume tells the story of the case study genre at a time when it became the genre par excellence for discussing human sexuality across the humanities and the life sciences. A History of the Case Study takes the reader on a transcontinental journey from the imperial world of fin-de-siècle Central Europe and the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the interwar metropolises of Weimar Germany, and to the United States of America in the post-war years.
Foregrounding the figures of case study pioneers, and always alert to the radical implications of their engagement with the genre, the six chapters scrutinise the case writing practices of Sigmund Freud and his predecessor sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing; writers such as Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Oskar Panizza and Alfred Döblin; Weimar intellectuals such as Erich Wulffen, and New York psychoanalyst Viola Bernard. There result important new insights into the continuing legacy of such writers, and into the agency increasingly claimed by the readerships that emerged with the development of modernity—from readers who self-identified as masochists, to conmen and female criminals.
Where previous accounts of the case study have tended to consider the history of the genre from a single disciplinary perspective, this book is structured by the interdisciplinary approach most applicable to the ambivalent context of modernity. It focuses on key moments in the genre’s past, occasions when and where the conventions of the case study were contested as part of a more profound enquiry into the nature of the human subject.Less
This volume tells the story of the case study genre at a time when it became the genre par excellence for discussing human sexuality across the humanities and the life sciences. A History of the Case Study takes the reader on a transcontinental journey from the imperial world of fin-de-siècle Central Europe and the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the interwar metropolises of Weimar Germany, and to the United States of America in the post-war years.
Foregrounding the figures of case study pioneers, and always alert to the radical implications of their engagement with the genre, the six chapters scrutinise the case writing practices of Sigmund Freud and his predecessor sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing; writers such as Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Oskar Panizza and Alfred Döblin; Weimar intellectuals such as Erich Wulffen, and New York psychoanalyst Viola Bernard. There result important new insights into the continuing legacy of such writers, and into the agency increasingly claimed by the readerships that emerged with the development of modernity—from readers who self-identified as masochists, to conmen and female criminals.
Where previous accounts of the case study have tended to consider the history of the genre from a single disciplinary perspective, this book is structured by the interdisciplinary approach most applicable to the ambivalent context of modernity. It focuses on key moments in the genre’s past, occasions when and where the conventions of the case study were contested as part of a more profound enquiry into the nature of the human subject.
Laura Helen Marks
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042140
- eISBN:
- 9780252050886
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042140.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Meanwhile, adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s queer classic The Picture of Dorian Gray extend and elaborate on explorations of the double by explicitly invoking histories of sexual representation in ...
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Meanwhile, adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s queer classic The Picture of Dorian Gray extend and elaborate on explorations of the double by explicitly invoking histories of sexual representation in connection to the sensual qualities of technology and nostalgia. In chapter 5, “`Strange Legacies of Thought and Passion’: Technologies of the Flesh and the Queering Effect of Dorian Gray,” I continue my analysis of the relationship between pornography, legacy, doubles, and technology through a close examination of two films based on Wilde’s novel: Take Off (1976) and Gluttony (2001). More than any other text, Dorian Gray engenders pornographic engagement with erotic legacy and the role of technology in the erotics of representation. Like Wilde’s novel, these films interrogate beauty and mortality, haunted at the margins by Wilde’s tragic fate and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Drawing on Wilde’s magic portrait as a predecessor, Take Off and Gluttony ruminate on mortality and relate it to the sensual, tactile qualities of evolving, mobile visual technologies and the role these technologies play in sexual subjectivity. Pornographic film, Weston and West suggest, is the inheritor to Wilde’s portrait. Both films draw on Wilde’s tale in order to address the media on which the self is captured, the shifting technologies used to exhibit this self, and the relationship of technology and media to the corporeal body. Through their reimagining of histories of Hollywood and pornographic film, respectively, Take Off and Gluttony signal the affective relationship between technology, pornography, decay, and popular culture, tracing a hardcore sexual history of the self that constitutes a sexual lineage.Less
Meanwhile, adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s queer classic The Picture of Dorian Gray extend and elaborate on explorations of the double by explicitly invoking histories of sexual representation in connection to the sensual qualities of technology and nostalgia. In chapter 5, “`Strange Legacies of Thought and Passion’: Technologies of the Flesh and the Queering Effect of Dorian Gray,” I continue my analysis of the relationship between pornography, legacy, doubles, and technology through a close examination of two films based on Wilde’s novel: Take Off (1976) and Gluttony (2001). More than any other text, Dorian Gray engenders pornographic engagement with erotic legacy and the role of technology in the erotics of representation. Like Wilde’s novel, these films interrogate beauty and mortality, haunted at the margins by Wilde’s tragic fate and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Drawing on Wilde’s magic portrait as a predecessor, Take Off and Gluttony ruminate on mortality and relate it to the sensual, tactile qualities of evolving, mobile visual technologies and the role these technologies play in sexual subjectivity. Pornographic film, Weston and West suggest, is the inheritor to Wilde’s portrait. Both films draw on Wilde’s tale in order to address the media on which the self is captured, the shifting technologies used to exhibit this self, and the relationship of technology and media to the corporeal body. Through their reimagining of histories of Hollywood and pornographic film, respectively, Take Off and Gluttony signal the affective relationship between technology, pornography, decay, and popular culture, tracing a hardcore sexual history of the self that constitutes a sexual lineage.
Holly Furneaux
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199566099
- eISBN:
- 9780191721915
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199566099.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book offers a radically new reading of Dickens and his major works. It demonstrates that, rather than representing a largely conventional, conservative view of sexuality and gender, he presents ...
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This book offers a radically new reading of Dickens and his major works. It demonstrates that, rather than representing a largely conventional, conservative view of sexuality and gender, he presents a distinctly queer corpus, everywhere fascinated by the diversity of gender roles, the expandability of notions of the family, and the complex multiplicity of sexual desire. The book examines the long overlooked figures of bachelor fathers, maritally resistant men, and male nurses, and explores Dickens's attention to a longing, not to reproduce, but to nurture, his interest in healing touch, and his career‐long commitment to articulating homoerotic desire. This book places Dickens's writing in a wider literary and social context, alongside authors including Bulwer‐Lytton, Tennyson, Braddon, Collins, and Whitman, to make a case for Dickens's central position in queer literary history. Examining novels, poetry, life‐writing, journalism, legal, and political debates, the book proposes that this eminent Victorian can direct us to the ways in which his culture could, and did, comfortably accommodate homoeroticism and families of choice. Further, it argues that Dickens's portrayals of nurturing masculinity and his concern with touch and affect between men challenge what we have been used to thinking about Victorian ideals of maleness. Queer Dickens intervenes into current debates about the Victorians (neither so punitive nor so prudish as we once imagined) and about the methodologies of histories of the family and of sexuality; it makes the case for a more optimistic, nurturing, and life‐affirming trajectory in queer theory.Less
This book offers a radically new reading of Dickens and his major works. It demonstrates that, rather than representing a largely conventional, conservative view of sexuality and gender, he presents a distinctly queer corpus, everywhere fascinated by the diversity of gender roles, the expandability of notions of the family, and the complex multiplicity of sexual desire. The book examines the long overlooked figures of bachelor fathers, maritally resistant men, and male nurses, and explores Dickens's attention to a longing, not to reproduce, but to nurture, his interest in healing touch, and his career‐long commitment to articulating homoerotic desire. This book places Dickens's writing in a wider literary and social context, alongside authors including Bulwer‐Lytton, Tennyson, Braddon, Collins, and Whitman, to make a case for Dickens's central position in queer literary history. Examining novels, poetry, life‐writing, journalism, legal, and political debates, the book proposes that this eminent Victorian can direct us to the ways in which his culture could, and did, comfortably accommodate homoeroticism and families of choice. Further, it argues that Dickens's portrayals of nurturing masculinity and his concern with touch and affect between men challenge what we have been used to thinking about Victorian ideals of maleness. Queer Dickens intervenes into current debates about the Victorians (neither so punitive nor so prudish as we once imagined) and about the methodologies of histories of the family and of sexuality; it makes the case for a more optimistic, nurturing, and life‐affirming trajectory in queer theory.
Roy Brand
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231160445
- eISBN:
- 9780231530842
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231160445.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter explores Michel Foucault's philosophical work, which focuses on the power structures—institutional, cultural, and social—that determine individual experience. His primary concern is to ...
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This chapter explores Michel Foucault's philosophical work, which focuses on the power structures—institutional, cultural, and social—that determine individual experience. His primary concern is to figure the extent of how individuals can experience differently, and his work demonstrates the need to fight for the freedom to think and feel outside the governing of social norms. In his trilogy The History of Sexuality, Foucault contemplates on the molding and normalizing of the most intimate of human experiences: sexual pleasure. How humans know themselves as subjects of desire and what they know of themselves is shaped by external power structures. Foucault describes this integration as power-knowledge—a matrix that instructs and controls. There is no “natural way” of making sense of experiences; these external matrices establish the scope and variety of knowledge and desire. Foucault's History of Sexuality contains a reading of the Symposium, which gives readers an opportunity to reevaluate pleasure and desire as the roots of philosophy.Less
This chapter explores Michel Foucault's philosophical work, which focuses on the power structures—institutional, cultural, and social—that determine individual experience. His primary concern is to figure the extent of how individuals can experience differently, and his work demonstrates the need to fight for the freedom to think and feel outside the governing of social norms. In his trilogy The History of Sexuality, Foucault contemplates on the molding and normalizing of the most intimate of human experiences: sexual pleasure. How humans know themselves as subjects of desire and what they know of themselves is shaped by external power structures. Foucault describes this integration as power-knowledge—a matrix that instructs and controls. There is no “natural way” of making sense of experiences; these external matrices establish the scope and variety of knowledge and desire. Foucault's History of Sexuality contains a reading of the Symposium, which gives readers an opportunity to reevaluate pleasure and desire as the roots of philosophy.
Laura Helen Marks
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042140
- eISBN:
- 9780252050886
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042140.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book argues that pornographic film relies on a particular "Victorianness" in generating eroticism—a Gothic Victorianness that is monstrous and restrained, repressed but also perverse, static but ...
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This book argues that pornographic film relies on a particular "Victorianness" in generating eroticism—a Gothic Victorianness that is monstrous and restrained, repressed but also perverse, static but also transformative, and preoccupied with gender, sexuality, race, and time. Pornographic films enthusiastically expose the perceived hypocrisy of this Victorianness, rhetorically equating it with mainstream, legitimate culture, as a way of staging pornography’s alleged sexual authenticity and transgressive nature. Through an analysis of porn set during the nineteenth century and porn adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this book shows how these adaptations expose the implicit pornographic aspects of “legitimate” culture while also revealing the extent to which “high” and “low” genres rely on each other for self-definition. In the process, neo-Victorian pornographies draw on Gothic spaces and icons in order to situate itself as this Gothic other, utilizing the Gothic and the monstrous to craft a transformative, pornographic space. These neo-Victorian Gothic pornographies expose the way the genre as a whole emphasizes, navigates, transgresses, and renegotiates gender, sexuality, and race through the lens of history and legacy.Less
This book argues that pornographic film relies on a particular "Victorianness" in generating eroticism—a Gothic Victorianness that is monstrous and restrained, repressed but also perverse, static but also transformative, and preoccupied with gender, sexuality, race, and time. Pornographic films enthusiastically expose the perceived hypocrisy of this Victorianness, rhetorically equating it with mainstream, legitimate culture, as a way of staging pornography’s alleged sexual authenticity and transgressive nature. Through an analysis of porn set during the nineteenth century and porn adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this book shows how these adaptations expose the implicit pornographic aspects of “legitimate” culture while also revealing the extent to which “high” and “low” genres rely on each other for self-definition. In the process, neo-Victorian pornographies draw on Gothic spaces and icons in order to situate itself as this Gothic other, utilizing the Gothic and the monstrous to craft a transformative, pornographic space. These neo-Victorian Gothic pornographies expose the way the genre as a whole emphasizes, navigates, transgresses, and renegotiates gender, sexuality, and race through the lens of history and legacy.
Jennifer Ingleheart
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198819677
- eISBN:
- 9780191859991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198819677.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The little-known figure of Philip Gillespie Bainbrigge is introduced to the reader, and his clandestine writings and importance for the history of sexuality and Classical Reception are outlined. A ...
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The little-known figure of Philip Gillespie Bainbrigge is introduced to the reader, and his clandestine writings and importance for the history of sexuality and Classical Reception are outlined. A brief biography sketches Bainbrigge’s education at Eton and Cambridge, his many homosexual friends, and his career as a schoolmaster at Shrewsbury. The Introduction examines his participation in a secretive culture in which men shared private homoerotic writings with each other. It examines Bainbrigge’s wartime friendship with Wilfred Owen, and his own war poetry, in the context of scholarship on homoeroticism and First World War poetry. It lays out the way in which classical education and the history of sexuality are intimately linked, exploring the institutionalization of the Classics in public schools, attempts to censor ancient sexuality, and sex education.Less
The little-known figure of Philip Gillespie Bainbrigge is introduced to the reader, and his clandestine writings and importance for the history of sexuality and Classical Reception are outlined. A brief biography sketches Bainbrigge’s education at Eton and Cambridge, his many homosexual friends, and his career as a schoolmaster at Shrewsbury. The Introduction examines his participation in a secretive culture in which men shared private homoerotic writings with each other. It examines Bainbrigge’s wartime friendship with Wilfred Owen, and his own war poetry, in the context of scholarship on homoeroticism and First World War poetry. It lays out the way in which classical education and the history of sexuality are intimately linked, exploring the institutionalization of the Classics in public schools, attempts to censor ancient sexuality, and sex education.
Kyla Wazana Tompkins
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479857722
- eISBN:
- 9781479818334
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479857722.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter discusses the role played by antebellum reformist campaigns in a bodily centered history of sexuality. It considers the emergence of dietary correctives to the practice of masturbation ...
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This chapter discusses the role played by antebellum reformist campaigns in a bodily centered history of sexuality. It considers the emergence of dietary correctives to the practice of masturbation in the work of Sylvester Graham, whose endorsement of whole-grained breads as a corrective to sexual excitement remaps both nation and globe. This remapping is prompted by the so-called “political life of the mouth,” an orifice that was as much concerned in the sustenance and reproduction of a purified whiteness as were the genitals that could be overexcited by improper eating. The chapter also elaborates on the idea of “dietetic biopower,” which is haunted by the specter of improper consumption, a possibility that connects the mouth not only to the genitals but also to the anus.Less
This chapter discusses the role played by antebellum reformist campaigns in a bodily centered history of sexuality. It considers the emergence of dietary correctives to the practice of masturbation in the work of Sylvester Graham, whose endorsement of whole-grained breads as a corrective to sexual excitement remaps both nation and globe. This remapping is prompted by the so-called “political life of the mouth,” an orifice that was as much concerned in the sustenance and reproduction of a purified whiteness as were the genitals that could be overexcited by improper eating. The chapter also elaborates on the idea of “dietetic biopower,” which is haunted by the specter of improper consumption, a possibility that connects the mouth not only to the genitals but also to the anus.
Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311352
- eISBN:
- 9781846313882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846313882.001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The introductory chapter discusses how the topic of sexuality is influenced according to gender, race, class, nationality and religion. The chapter cites examples of queer relationships based on the ...
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The introductory chapter discusses how the topic of sexuality is influenced according to gender, race, class, nationality and religion. The chapter cites examples of queer relationships based on the current events. Sexuality in science fiction is just as complicated, as art imitates life. The chapter looks into the history of queer theory through political and cultural representations, and the future possibilities of queer sexuality as reflected in science fictions of the past century.Less
The introductory chapter discusses how the topic of sexuality is influenced according to gender, race, class, nationality and religion. The chapter cites examples of queer relationships based on the current events. Sexuality in science fiction is just as complicated, as art imitates life. The chapter looks into the history of queer theory through political and cultural representations, and the future possibilities of queer sexuality as reflected in science fictions of the past century.
Robert Mills
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226169125
- eISBN:
- 9780226169262
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226169262.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History
During the Middle Ages in Europe, some sexual and gendered behaviors were labeled “sodomitical” or evoked using ambiguous phrases such as the “unmentionable vice” or the “sin against nature.” How, ...
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During the Middle Ages in Europe, some sexual and gendered behaviors were labeled “sodomitical” or evoked using ambiguous phrases such as the “unmentionable vice” or the “sin against nature.” How, though, did these categories enter the field of vision? How do you know a sodomite when you see one? Challenging the view that medieval ideas about sexual and gender dissidence were too confused to congeal into a coherent form, this book demonstrates that sodomy had a rich, multimedia presence in the period—and that a flexible approach to questions of terminology sheds new light on the many forms this presence took. Arguing that we need to take account of the role played by translation—whether visual, verbal, or cultural—in endowing sodomy with a pictorial or textual form, the book also considers the extent to which medieval materials can be re-visioned in light of twenty-first-century categories of thought. Also, the book advances discussion by showing how greater attention needs to be paid to motifs of gender slippage and to notions of imitation and derivation in medieval encounters with sex. Among the topics covered are depictions of the practices of sodomites in illuminated Bibles; motifs of gender transformation and sex change as envisioned by medieval artists and commentators on Ovid; sexual relations in religious houses and other enclosed spaces; and the applicability of modern categories such as “transgender,” “butch” and “femme,” “queer,” and “sexual orientation” to medieval culture.Less
During the Middle Ages in Europe, some sexual and gendered behaviors were labeled “sodomitical” or evoked using ambiguous phrases such as the “unmentionable vice” or the “sin against nature.” How, though, did these categories enter the field of vision? How do you know a sodomite when you see one? Challenging the view that medieval ideas about sexual and gender dissidence were too confused to congeal into a coherent form, this book demonstrates that sodomy had a rich, multimedia presence in the period—and that a flexible approach to questions of terminology sheds new light on the many forms this presence took. Arguing that we need to take account of the role played by translation—whether visual, verbal, or cultural—in endowing sodomy with a pictorial or textual form, the book also considers the extent to which medieval materials can be re-visioned in light of twenty-first-century categories of thought. Also, the book advances discussion by showing how greater attention needs to be paid to motifs of gender slippage and to notions of imitation and derivation in medieval encounters with sex. Among the topics covered are depictions of the practices of sodomites in illuminated Bibles; motifs of gender transformation and sex change as envisioned by medieval artists and commentators on Ovid; sexual relations in religious houses and other enclosed spaces; and the applicability of modern categories such as “transgender,” “butch” and “femme,” “queer,” and “sexual orientation” to medieval culture.
Andrew J. Counter
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198785996
- eISBN:
- 9780191827709
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198785996.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, European Literature
At the centre of this chapter are similar remarks by two Restoration historians of sexuality: the novelist Charles Nodier, and the pre-socialist Charles Fourier. In their writings, both consider the ...
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At the centre of this chapter are similar remarks by two Restoration historians of sexuality: the novelist Charles Nodier, and the pre-socialist Charles Fourier. In their writings, both consider the changeable legal status of incest in history: permitted in the book of Genesis, yet outlawed and viscerally disapproved of in modern Europe. On the basis of this variation, both conclude that there is no such thing as a natural or necessary rule of sexual conduct: all sexual morality is customary and contingent. This argument resembles the underlying principle of much contemporary work in the history of sexuality, which often adduces the historical changeability of sexual mores in an attempt to destabilize contemporary sexual norms—a move which, though contestable, has proved politically powerful. The chapter thus sets up a multi-layered parallel between early nineteenth-century and contemporary understandings of the interrelation of sexuality, politics, and history.Less
At the centre of this chapter are similar remarks by two Restoration historians of sexuality: the novelist Charles Nodier, and the pre-socialist Charles Fourier. In their writings, both consider the changeable legal status of incest in history: permitted in the book of Genesis, yet outlawed and viscerally disapproved of in modern Europe. On the basis of this variation, both conclude that there is no such thing as a natural or necessary rule of sexual conduct: all sexual morality is customary and contingent. This argument resembles the underlying principle of much contemporary work in the history of sexuality, which often adduces the historical changeability of sexual mores in an attempt to destabilize contemporary sexual norms—a move which, though contestable, has proved politically powerful. The chapter thus sets up a multi-layered parallel between early nineteenth-century and contemporary understandings of the interrelation of sexuality, politics, and history.
Kate Fisher and Rebecca Langlands (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199660513
- eISBN:
- 9780191799730
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660513.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Archaeology: Classical
The chapters in this volume constitute a series of case studies exploring the ways in which claims about the past have been crucial in articulating sexual morals, in driving political, legal, and ...
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The chapters in this volume constitute a series of case studies exploring the ways in which claims about the past have been crucial in articulating sexual morals, in driving political, legal, and social change, in shaping individual identities, and in constructing and grounding knowledge about sex. Read together, the chapters invite a consideration of the significance and purpose of writing and thinking about sex in the past; an interrogation of the evidential basis that informs sexual knowledge; and an exploration of the authority used to support such knowledge. Through the attention to the intersection between the construction of knowledge about sex and the construction of knowledge about the past, this volume yields further important insights into the construction of knowledge and the practice of history. The book charts the changing status of historical thinking in changing constructions of what counts as knowledge, and chart the politics at stake in the construction of authentic knowledge. At the heart of the volume is a vital debate about how one should study history and how the past can and should inform discussion about sex and sexuality. Perspectives on these thorny questions are provided by scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and approaches, and the papers cover a wide variety of historical periods and genres of discourse, including novels, scientific writings, museum displays, and scholarship on history and literature. As such, the volume provides a context in which multiple voices can be brought into productive dialogue with one another.Less
The chapters in this volume constitute a series of case studies exploring the ways in which claims about the past have been crucial in articulating sexual morals, in driving political, legal, and social change, in shaping individual identities, and in constructing and grounding knowledge about sex. Read together, the chapters invite a consideration of the significance and purpose of writing and thinking about sex in the past; an interrogation of the evidential basis that informs sexual knowledge; and an exploration of the authority used to support such knowledge. Through the attention to the intersection between the construction of knowledge about sex and the construction of knowledge about the past, this volume yields further important insights into the construction of knowledge and the practice of history. The book charts the changing status of historical thinking in changing constructions of what counts as knowledge, and chart the politics at stake in the construction of authentic knowledge. At the heart of the volume is a vital debate about how one should study history and how the past can and should inform discussion about sex and sexuality. Perspectives on these thorny questions are provided by scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and approaches, and the papers cover a wide variety of historical periods and genres of discourse, including novels, scientific writings, museum displays, and scholarship on history and literature. As such, the volume provides a context in which multiple voices can be brought into productive dialogue with one another.
Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469636269
- eISBN:
- 9781469636276
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469636269.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
At a moment when “freedom of religion” rhetoric fuels public debate, it is easy to assume that sex and religion have faced each other in pitched battle throughout modern U.S. history. Yet, by ...
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At a moment when “freedom of religion” rhetoric fuels public debate, it is easy to assume that sex and religion have faced each other in pitched battle throughout modern U.S. history. Yet, by tracking the nation’s changing religious and sexual landscapes over the twentieth century, this book challenges that zero-sum account of sexuality locked in a struggle with religion. It shows that religion played a central role in the history of sexuality in the United States, shaping sexual politics, communities, and identities. At the same time, sexuality has left lipstick traces on American religious history. From polyamory to pornography, from birth control to the AIDS epidemic, this book follows religious faiths and practices across a range of sacred spaces: rabbinical seminaries, African American missions, Catholic schools, pagan communes, the YWCA, and much more. What emerges is the shared story of religion and sexuality and how both became wedded to American culture and politics.
The volume, framed by a provocative introduction by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White and a compelling afterword by John D’Emilio, features essays by Rebecca T. Alpert and Jacob J. Staub, Rebecca L. Davis, Lynne Gerber, Andrea R. Jain, Kathi Kern, Rachel Kranson, James P. McCartin, Samira K. Mehta, Daniel Rivers, Whitney Strub, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Judith Weisenfeld, and Neil J. Young.Less
At a moment when “freedom of religion” rhetoric fuels public debate, it is easy to assume that sex and religion have faced each other in pitched battle throughout modern U.S. history. Yet, by tracking the nation’s changing religious and sexual landscapes over the twentieth century, this book challenges that zero-sum account of sexuality locked in a struggle with religion. It shows that religion played a central role in the history of sexuality in the United States, shaping sexual politics, communities, and identities. At the same time, sexuality has left lipstick traces on American religious history. From polyamory to pornography, from birth control to the AIDS epidemic, this book follows religious faiths and practices across a range of sacred spaces: rabbinical seminaries, African American missions, Catholic schools, pagan communes, the YWCA, and much more. What emerges is the shared story of religion and sexuality and how both became wedded to American culture and politics.
The volume, framed by a provocative introduction by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White and a compelling afterword by John D’Emilio, features essays by Rebecca T. Alpert and Jacob J. Staub, Rebecca L. Davis, Lynne Gerber, Andrea R. Jain, Kathi Kern, Rachel Kranson, James P. McCartin, Samira K. Mehta, Daniel Rivers, Whitney Strub, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Judith Weisenfeld, and Neil J. Young.
