Saskia Lettmaier
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199569977
- eISBN:
- 9780191722066
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199569977.003.0005
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History
This chapter considers the high Victorian abandonment of the previously employed strategies of containment and the attendant exposure of the structural inconsistency. It demonstrates that as the ...
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This chapter considers the high Victorian abandonment of the previously employed strategies of containment and the attendant exposure of the structural inconsistency. It demonstrates that as the structural inconsistency was rendered more visible, so the breach-of-promise action and, more particularly, the breach-of-promise plaintiff became targets of cultural exclusion and attack. Plaintiff success was dampened and breach-of-promise fiction started to thrive on an exploitation of the structural inconsistency. The plaintiff of the high Victorian period is the ideal corrupted, a pinchbeck angel. Her outwardly perfect womanhood is shown to be inwardly flawed, hollow, and vicious. In the high Victorian period, breach-of-promise comedy takes on the features of satire as it dramatizes the utter lack of coherence between surface appearance and reality, between professions of virtue and the practices that contradict them.Less
This chapter considers the high Victorian abandonment of the previously employed strategies of containment and the attendant exposure of the structural inconsistency. It demonstrates that as the structural inconsistency was rendered more visible, so the breach-of-promise action and, more particularly, the breach-of-promise plaintiff became targets of cultural exclusion and attack. Plaintiff success was dampened and breach-of-promise fiction started to thrive on an exploitation of the structural inconsistency. The plaintiff of the high Victorian period is the ideal corrupted, a pinchbeck angel. Her outwardly perfect womanhood is shown to be inwardly flawed, hollow, and vicious. In the high Victorian period, breach-of-promise comedy takes on the features of satire as it dramatizes the utter lack of coherence between surface appearance and reality, between professions of virtue and the practices that contradict them.
David. Cressy
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198207818
- eISBN:
- 9780191677809
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207818.003.0016
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter examines one of the most startling phenomena of the English revolution, the appearance, or alleged appearance, of a sect of revolutionary fundamentalist nudists. Stories about this group ...
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This chapter examines one of the most startling phenomena of the English revolution, the appearance, or alleged appearance, of a sect of revolutionary fundamentalist nudists. Stories about this group appeared in the popular press in 1641, with reports of their sexual and religious perversions. Other authors discussed their antecedents in ancient Christianity, medieval heresy, and the more recent radical reformation. Adamite elements appeared among the Ranters and Quakers of the early 1650s. Questions arise not only about the truth of the matter, but also about the moral, political, and religious climate in which the Adamite phenomenon was discussed.Less
This chapter examines one of the most startling phenomena of the English revolution, the appearance, or alleged appearance, of a sect of revolutionary fundamentalist nudists. Stories about this group appeared in the popular press in 1641, with reports of their sexual and religious perversions. Other authors discussed their antecedents in ancient Christianity, medieval heresy, and the more recent radical reformation. Adamite elements appeared among the Ranters and Quakers of the early 1650s. Questions arise not only about the truth of the matter, but also about the moral, political, and religious climate in which the Adamite phenomenon was discussed.
GEORGE GARNETT
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199291564
- eISBN:
- 9780191710520
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199291564.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas, European Medieval History
Under papal leadership, the clergy were led further away from the ideal of apostolic poverty espoused in Marsilius's time by the Franciscans. Although the Christianization of the Empire had been ...
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Under papal leadership, the clergy were led further away from the ideal of apostolic poverty espoused in Marsilius's time by the Franciscans. Although the Christianization of the Empire had been perverted from the very start, the Empire was nevertheless being progressively Christianized pari passu with the perversion of the clergy. Only when Christianized could the Empire, or ‘human legislator’, be perfect, in the Aristotelian sense of complete or fully realized, for only Christians had a correct understanding of the eternal life to which man was directed. Only then would the ‘human legislator’ be ‘faithful’. Perfection only became possible with Constantine's conversion, but his actions at that time sowed the seed from which perversion grew. This dialectical conflict had reached a crescendo in Marsilius's own day, when John XXII had attempted to keep the imperial office vacant so that he could usurp its functions himself. With the pope and Ludwig as self-proclaimed emperor both attempting to exercise imperial power, catastrophe would ensue.Less
Under papal leadership, the clergy were led further away from the ideal of apostolic poverty espoused in Marsilius's time by the Franciscans. Although the Christianization of the Empire had been perverted from the very start, the Empire was nevertheless being progressively Christianized pari passu with the perversion of the clergy. Only when Christianized could the Empire, or ‘human legislator’, be perfect, in the Aristotelian sense of complete or fully realized, for only Christians had a correct understanding of the eternal life to which man was directed. Only then would the ‘human legislator’ be ‘faithful’. Perfection only became possible with Constantine's conversion, but his actions at that time sowed the seed from which perversion grew. This dialectical conflict had reached a crescendo in Marsilius's own day, when John XXII had attempted to keep the imperial office vacant so that he could usurp its functions himself. With the pope and Ludwig as self-proclaimed emperor both attempting to exercise imperial power, catastrophe would ensue.
Jerome Neu
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199862986
- eISBN:
- 9780199949762
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199862986.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was the father of psychoanalysis, which is both a technique for exploring the mind and a method of psychological therapy. While some of his views remain controversial, many ...
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Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was the father of psychoanalysis, which is both a technique for exploring the mind and a method of psychological therapy. While some of his views remain controversial, many of his central concepts have become part of our common self-understanding. Whether talking about obsessive-compulsive and other neuroses, anal character traits, narcissism, transference and displaced feelings, sublimated instincts, the ego and the id, slips of the tongue, and on indefinitely, we use his language and his theories to describe and explain our lives. This chapter discusses Freud's views on ethics, perversions, and psychoanalysis.Less
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was the father of psychoanalysis, which is both a technique for exploring the mind and a method of psychological therapy. While some of his views remain controversial, many of his central concepts have become part of our common self-understanding. Whether talking about obsessive-compulsive and other neuroses, anal character traits, narcissism, transference and displaced feelings, sublimated instincts, the ego and the id, slips of the tongue, and on indefinitely, we use his language and his theories to describe and explain our lives. This chapter discusses Freud's views on ethics, perversions, and psychoanalysis.
Jennifer Radden (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195149531
- eISBN:
- 9780199870943
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195149531.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter explores the concept of paraphilia as defined in the third and current fourth edition of the handbook of the American Psychiatric Association—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of ...
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This chapter explores the concept of paraphilia as defined in the third and current fourth edition of the handbook of the American Psychiatric Association—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). DSM-IV has excluded homosexual orientation from the sexual mental disorders, and eschewed the pejorative “perversion” in favor of the clinical “paraphilia” in naming other sexualities. It is argued that DSM-IV embodies cultural biases “masquerading” as scientific medical truth, but also expresses a more liberal view of human sexuality.Less
This chapter explores the concept of paraphilia as defined in the third and current fourth edition of the handbook of the American Psychiatric Association—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). DSM-IV has excluded homosexual orientation from the sexual mental disorders, and eschewed the pejorative “perversion” in favor of the clinical “paraphilia” in naming other sexualities. It is argued that DSM-IV embodies cultural biases “masquerading” as scientific medical truth, but also expresses a more liberal view of human sexuality.
Jonathan Dollimore
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112259
- eISBN:
- 9780191670732
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112259.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Sigmund Freud was aware of the paradoxical nature of desire, not least because of its fundamental perversity. However, psychoanalysis, in discovering that perversity, needs also to address a perverse ...
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Sigmund Freud was aware of the paradoxical nature of desire, not least because of its fundamental perversity. However, psychoanalysis, in discovering that perversity, needs also to address a perverse dynamic inextricably bound into desire but not reducible to it, however defined. To recover the history of perversion is to rethink some of the most basic classificatory categories which have organised and, in a sense produced, sexuality. Psychoanalysis also needs to disclose the perverse nature of the social, finally, to recognise that a challenging concept of the perverse lies not any longer in the polymorphous perverse, but in the paradoxical perverse or the perverse dynamic. Perversion subverts not in the recovery of a pre-social libido, or an original plenitude, but as a dynamic intrinsic to social process.Less
Sigmund Freud was aware of the paradoxical nature of desire, not least because of its fundamental perversity. However, psychoanalysis, in discovering that perversity, needs also to address a perverse dynamic inextricably bound into desire but not reducible to it, however defined. To recover the history of perversion is to rethink some of the most basic classificatory categories which have organised and, in a sense produced, sexuality. Psychoanalysis also needs to disclose the perverse nature of the social, finally, to recognise that a challenging concept of the perverse lies not any longer in the polymorphous perverse, but in the paradoxical perverse or the perverse dynamic. Perversion subverts not in the recovery of a pre-social libido, or an original plenitude, but as a dynamic intrinsic to social process.
Ariane Cruz
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781479809288
- eISBN:
- 9781479899425
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479809288.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
The Color of Kink explores black women's representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the ...
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The Color of Kink explores black women's representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the 1930s to the present, revealing the ways in which they illustrate a complex and contradictory negotiation of pain, pleasure, and power for black women. Based on personal interviews conducted with pornography performers, producers, and professional dominatrices, visual and textual analysis, and extensive archival research, Ariane Cruz reveals BDSM and pornography as critical sites from which to rethink the formative links between Black female sexuality and violence. She explores how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Cruz argues that BDSM is a productive space from which to consider the complexity and diverseness of black women's sexual practice and the mutability of black female sexuality. Illuminating the cross-pollination of black sexuality and BDSM, The Color of Kink makes a unique contribution to the growing scholarship on racialized sexuality, pornography, and sexual cultures.Less
The Color of Kink explores black women's representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the 1930s to the present, revealing the ways in which they illustrate a complex and contradictory negotiation of pain, pleasure, and power for black women. Based on personal interviews conducted with pornography performers, producers, and professional dominatrices, visual and textual analysis, and extensive archival research, Ariane Cruz reveals BDSM and pornography as critical sites from which to rethink the formative links between Black female sexuality and violence. She explores how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Cruz argues that BDSM is a productive space from which to consider the complexity and diverseness of black women's sexual practice and the mutability of black female sexuality. Illuminating the cross-pollination of black sexuality and BDSM, The Color of Kink makes a unique contribution to the growing scholarship on racialized sexuality, pornography, and sexual cultures.
CATHERINE JAGOE
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158868
- eISBN:
- 9780191673399
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158868.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The notion of inevitable decline or degeneration produced an aesthetic movement that revolved around a group of ‘decadent’ or Symbolist writers and painters of the late 19th century whose subjects ...
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The notion of inevitable decline or degeneration produced an aesthetic movement that revolved around a group of ‘decadent’ or Symbolist writers and painters of the late 19th century whose subjects and style had a considerable impact on European and American literature. United in their belief that God, morality, love, and nature were shibboleths of a pre-Darwinian age, the decadents were dedicated to maximising the sensations of the moment. Using Charles Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal as a model, they explored the strange terrain of sexual perversions, exoticism, and the occult. Decadents espoused a ‘love of art for art's sake’, unimpeded by any extra-aesthetic considerations. While their aesthetic theory is clearly alien to Benito Pérez Galdós's outlook, which is deeply concerned with morality and very far from the ‘art for art's sake’ of the aesthetes, some of their subject-matter does find its way into Ángel Guerra, in nuanced form.Less
The notion of inevitable decline or degeneration produced an aesthetic movement that revolved around a group of ‘decadent’ or Symbolist writers and painters of the late 19th century whose subjects and style had a considerable impact on European and American literature. United in their belief that God, morality, love, and nature were shibboleths of a pre-Darwinian age, the decadents were dedicated to maximising the sensations of the moment. Using Charles Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal as a model, they explored the strange terrain of sexual perversions, exoticism, and the occult. Decadents espoused a ‘love of art for art's sake’, unimpeded by any extra-aesthetic considerations. While their aesthetic theory is clearly alien to Benito Pérez Galdós's outlook, which is deeply concerned with morality and very far from the ‘art for art's sake’ of the aesthetes, some of their subject-matter does find its way into Ángel Guerra, in nuanced form.
DIANA JEATER
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198203797
- eISBN:
- 9780191675980
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198203797.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter discusses problems of morality and sexual behaviour in the Gwelo District. The absence of lineage control in the towns left few sanctions against sexual violence. The whiff of ...
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This chapter discusses problems of morality and sexual behaviour in the Gwelo District. The absence of lineage control in the towns left few sanctions against sexual violence. The whiff of ‘perversion’ that the Occupation had introduced hung over the urban streets. Manifestations of sexual harassment and assault that occurred in the town were specific to the social climate of urbanization and occupation. Colonization created ways of thinking about sexuality and sexual stimulation, producing certain new types of sexual behaviour. This chapter also discusses the ‘Black Peril’ issue that became the focus of growing political tensions, as the lives of African men were used as pawns in a power struggle between settler, BSACo, and Crown. In 1916, the Immorality and Indecent Behaviour Suppression Ordinance was passed adding to the legislation on the Black Peril.Less
This chapter discusses problems of morality and sexual behaviour in the Gwelo District. The absence of lineage control in the towns left few sanctions against sexual violence. The whiff of ‘perversion’ that the Occupation had introduced hung over the urban streets. Manifestations of sexual harassment and assault that occurred in the town were specific to the social climate of urbanization and occupation. Colonization created ways of thinking about sexuality and sexual stimulation, producing certain new types of sexual behaviour. This chapter also discusses the ‘Black Peril’ issue that became the focus of growing political tensions, as the lives of African men were used as pawns in a power struggle between settler, BSACo, and Crown. In 1916, the Immorality and Indecent Behaviour Suppression Ordinance was passed adding to the legislation on the Black Peril.
Anne Dufourmantelle
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823279586
- eISBN:
- 9780823281459
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823279586.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Gentleness sells; it is set before us in all its forms, everywhere, constantly. Gentleness is used as an excuse to ennoble objects of consumption. Perversion is exercised in the name of gentleness. ...
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Gentleness sells; it is set before us in all its forms, everywhere, constantly. Gentleness is used as an excuse to ennoble objects of consumption. Perversion is exercised in the name of gentleness. Gentleness is divided into two bodies of socioeconomic control: carnal and spiritual.Less
Gentleness sells; it is set before us in all its forms, everywhere, constantly. Gentleness is used as an excuse to ennoble objects of consumption. Perversion is exercised in the name of gentleness. Gentleness is divided into two bodies of socioeconomic control: carnal and spiritual.
Anne Dufourmantelle
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823279586
- eISBN:
- 9780823281459
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823279586.003.0020
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
The opposite of gentleness is not brutality or violence itself, it is counterfeit gentleness; what perverts it by imitating it. It has become intolerable to “withdraw ourselves” or else this ...
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The opposite of gentleness is not brutality or violence itself, it is counterfeit gentleness; what perverts it by imitating it. It has become intolerable to “withdraw ourselves” or else this withdrawal must be announced, scheduled, and registered. Gentleness is in this withdrawal. The artificial is not even sad anymore; sorrows, regrets, expectations are erased by the artificial, and it has no constraints.Less
The opposite of gentleness is not brutality or violence itself, it is counterfeit gentleness; what perverts it by imitating it. It has become intolerable to “withdraw ourselves” or else this withdrawal must be announced, scheduled, and registered. Gentleness is in this withdrawal. The artificial is not even sad anymore; sorrows, regrets, expectations are erased by the artificial, and it has no constraints.
Melissa N. Stein
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816673025
- eISBN:
- 9781452952437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816673025.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Chapter three demonstrates that racial science and sexology were not separate fields in America. Rather, they shared the same key scientists, whose assessments of the causes of “perversion” broke ...
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Chapter three demonstrates that racial science and sexology were not separate fields in America. Rather, they shared the same key scientists, whose assessments of the causes of “perversion” broke down along racial lines. These scientists characterized “perversion” among non-whites as vice, indicative of the group’s degeneracy, and among whites, symptomatic of individual pathology.Less
Chapter three demonstrates that racial science and sexology were not separate fields in America. Rather, they shared the same key scientists, whose assessments of the causes of “perversion” broke down along racial lines. These scientists characterized “perversion” among non-whites as vice, indicative of the group’s degeneracy, and among whites, symptomatic of individual pathology.
Hans Tao-ming Huang
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9789888083077
- eISBN:
- 9789882209817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888083077.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter accounts for the scientific construction of male homosexuality from the 1950s through the 1970s in Taiwan. In delineating a normative culture of sex established by the nascent ‘psy’ ...
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This chapter accounts for the scientific construction of male homosexuality from the 1950s through the 1970s in Taiwan. In delineating a normative culture of sex established by the nascent ‘psy’ industry, it demonstrates how The Man Who Escapes Marriage (1976), Taiwan's first ‘homosexual’ popular novel, emerged as a product of the mental hygiene movement. Enabled by the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 decision to depathologise homosexuality as mental illness, The Man represents, this chapter argues, a limiting case whereby the legitimation of homosexual desire is made through the author's appeal to the virtue of moral rectitude.Less
This chapter accounts for the scientific construction of male homosexuality from the 1950s through the 1970s in Taiwan. In delineating a normative culture of sex established by the nascent ‘psy’ industry, it demonstrates how The Man Who Escapes Marriage (1976), Taiwan's first ‘homosexual’ popular novel, emerged as a product of the mental hygiene movement. Enabled by the American Psychiatric Association's 1973 decision to depathologise homosexuality as mental illness, The Man represents, this chapter argues, a limiting case whereby the legitimation of homosexual desire is made through the author's appeal to the virtue of moral rectitude.
Hans Tao-ming Huang
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9789888083077
- eISBN:
- 9789882209817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888083077.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter examines the journalistic representation of male same-sex relations from the 1950s to the 1980s, analysing the disparate regimes of knowledge—police administration, psychiatry and ...
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This chapter examines the journalistic representation of male same-sex relations from the 1950s to the 1980s, analysing the disparate regimes of knowledge—police administration, psychiatry and epidemiology—with regard to the production of male homosexuality. The chapter shows how the “glass clique”, a local epithet attributed to the imagined male homosexual community, was subject to state regulation of social morals and was policed as prostitutes. Such an equation of male homosexuality with prostitution continued to figure in the eroto/homophobic discourse of AIDS as the “glass clique” came to be identified as a disposable population.Less
This chapter examines the journalistic representation of male same-sex relations from the 1950s to the 1980s, analysing the disparate regimes of knowledge—police administration, psychiatry and epidemiology—with regard to the production of male homosexuality. The chapter shows how the “glass clique”, a local epithet attributed to the imagined male homosexual community, was subject to state regulation of social morals and was policed as prostitutes. Such an equation of male homosexuality with prostitution continued to figure in the eroto/homophobic discourse of AIDS as the “glass clique” came to be identified as a disposable population.
Amber Jamilla Musser
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479807031
- eISBN:
- 9781479845491
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479807031.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This chapter juxtaposes Nao Bustamante’s and Patty Chang’s video installations, both of which depict weeping as performances of theatrical excess. Here, brown jouissance opens us toward reading with ...
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This chapter juxtaposes Nao Bustamante’s and Patty Chang’s video installations, both of which depict weeping as performances of theatrical excess. Here, brown jouissance opens us toward reading with modes of affective unruliness, so that we can understand the non-normativity of brown feminine domesticity and emotionality and locate its productive excesses. Neapolitan (2003), which shows Bustamente crying at the final scene of Fresa y Chocolate, and In Love (2001), which shows Chang passionately kissing her parents while crying, both rely on divergent models of automatic behavior. Bustamente offers a theatrical version of the hysterical Latina, while Chang performs the mechanical coldness and racial melancholy that Asian Americans are imagined to inhabit. By toying with these expectations, both Bustamente and Chang veer into the territory of perversion, enabling us to see both the racialized norms of affective comportment and their possibility for subversion via the technology of the loop, which shows us brown jouissance as the multiplication of the present. In this chapter the charge of automaticity becomes fodder for alternate experiences of reality.Less
This chapter juxtaposes Nao Bustamante’s and Patty Chang’s video installations, both of which depict weeping as performances of theatrical excess. Here, brown jouissance opens us toward reading with modes of affective unruliness, so that we can understand the non-normativity of brown feminine domesticity and emotionality and locate its productive excesses. Neapolitan (2003), which shows Bustamente crying at the final scene of Fresa y Chocolate, and In Love (2001), which shows Chang passionately kissing her parents while crying, both rely on divergent models of automatic behavior. Bustamente offers a theatrical version of the hysterical Latina, while Chang performs the mechanical coldness and racial melancholy that Asian Americans are imagined to inhabit. By toying with these expectations, both Bustamente and Chang veer into the territory of perversion, enabling us to see both the racialized norms of affective comportment and their possibility for subversion via the technology of the loop, which shows us brown jouissance as the multiplication of the present. In this chapter the charge of automaticity becomes fodder for alternate experiences of reality.
Miguel de Beistegui
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226547374
- eISBN:
- 9780226547404
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226547404.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter turns to the birth of the homo sexualis, and of the discourse of sexuality, as the second pillar of liberalism investigated in the book. Its main (seemingly paradoxical) thesis is that ...
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This chapter turns to the birth of the homo sexualis, and of the discourse of sexuality, as the second pillar of liberalism investigated in the book. Its main (seemingly paradoxical) thesis is that the question of punishment as it arises in the liberal context also accounts for the emergence of a different discourse, that of forensic psychiatry and psychopathology which, very quickly, and as early as the 1840s, established itself as a science of sexuality. Faced with a number of criminal cases that resisted its rationality of crime and punishment, based on the notions of interest, utility, motive and efficiency, liberal governmentality found it necessary to supplement the rationality in question with another, based on the distinction between normal and abnormal (or pathological) individuals and instincts. Desire was thus inserted into a new rationality (that of psychopathology and the scientia sexualis), and a new family of concepts (that of natural, normal instincts or drives, and deviations or perversions).Less
This chapter turns to the birth of the homo sexualis, and of the discourse of sexuality, as the second pillar of liberalism investigated in the book. Its main (seemingly paradoxical) thesis is that the question of punishment as it arises in the liberal context also accounts for the emergence of a different discourse, that of forensic psychiatry and psychopathology which, very quickly, and as early as the 1840s, established itself as a science of sexuality. Faced with a number of criminal cases that resisted its rationality of crime and punishment, based on the notions of interest, utility, motive and efficiency, liberal governmentality found it necessary to supplement the rationality in question with another, based on the distinction between normal and abnormal (or pathological) individuals and instincts. Desire was thus inserted into a new rationality (that of psychopathology and the scientia sexualis), and a new family of concepts (that of natural, normal instincts or drives, and deviations or perversions).
Miguel de Beistegui
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226547374
- eISBN:
- 9780226547404
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226547404.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter concludes the genealogy of the homo sexualis by turning to the birth of psychoanalysis, and Freud's contribution to the debate regarding the place and role of sexual drives in a range of ...
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This chapter concludes the genealogy of the homo sexualis by turning to the birth of psychoanalysis, and Freud's contribution to the debate regarding the place and role of sexual drives in a range of behaviors and actions. The chapter claims that, whilst retaining the overall epistemological framework of sexuality, Freud offers a way out of the psychiatric discourse of the natural instinct and of perversions as essentially pathological. On the one hand, and through his analysis of child sexuality in particular, he recognizes “normal,” that is, adult, genital and reproductive sexuality as the result of a perhaps necessary but in any event costly process of normalization. On the other hand, from “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920) onward, Freud is forced to recognize the existence of a drive that is itself not sexual, and thus not generated from within the economy of the pleasure principle. This is an essentially destructive form of desire, which can be oriented towards the self, or towards others. As such, it sheds light on some of the disturbing behaviors explored previously, yet without situating them within the rationalities of either sexuality or liberal penology.Less
This chapter concludes the genealogy of the homo sexualis by turning to the birth of psychoanalysis, and Freud's contribution to the debate regarding the place and role of sexual drives in a range of behaviors and actions. The chapter claims that, whilst retaining the overall epistemological framework of sexuality, Freud offers a way out of the psychiatric discourse of the natural instinct and of perversions as essentially pathological. On the one hand, and through his analysis of child sexuality in particular, he recognizes “normal,” that is, adult, genital and reproductive sexuality as the result of a perhaps necessary but in any event costly process of normalization. On the other hand, from “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920) onward, Freud is forced to recognize the existence of a drive that is itself not sexual, and thus not generated from within the economy of the pleasure principle. This is an essentially destructive form of desire, which can be oriented towards the self, or towards others. As such, it sheds light on some of the disturbing behaviors explored previously, yet without situating them within the rationalities of either sexuality or liberal penology.
Margherita Long
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804762335
- eISBN:
- 9780804772518
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804762335.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book positions one of Japan's most canonical and best translated twentieth-century authors at the center of contemporary debates in feminism. Examining sexual perversion in Tanizaki's aesthetic ...
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This book positions one of Japan's most canonical and best translated twentieth-century authors at the center of contemporary debates in feminism. Examining sexual perversion in Tanizaki's aesthetic essays, cultural criticism, cinema writings, and short novels from the 1930s, it argues that Tanizaki understands human subjectivity in remarkably Freudian terms, but that he is much more critical than Freud about what it means for the possibility of love. According to Tanizaki, perversion involves not the proliferation of interesting gender positions, but rather the tragic absence of even two sexes, since femininity is only defined as man's absence, supplement, or complement. This book reads Tanizaki with a theoretical complexity he demands but has seldom received. As a critique of the historicist and gender-focused paradigms that inform much recent work in Japanese literary and cultural studies, this book offers exciting new interpretations that should spark controversy in the fields of feminist theory and critical Asian studies.Less
This book positions one of Japan's most canonical and best translated twentieth-century authors at the center of contemporary debates in feminism. Examining sexual perversion in Tanizaki's aesthetic essays, cultural criticism, cinema writings, and short novels from the 1930s, it argues that Tanizaki understands human subjectivity in remarkably Freudian terms, but that he is much more critical than Freud about what it means for the possibility of love. According to Tanizaki, perversion involves not the proliferation of interesting gender positions, but rather the tragic absence of even two sexes, since femininity is only defined as man's absence, supplement, or complement. This book reads Tanizaki with a theoretical complexity he demands but has seldom received. As a critique of the historicist and gender-focused paradigms that inform much recent work in Japanese literary and cultural studies, this book offers exciting new interpretations that should spark controversy in the fields of feminist theory and critical Asian studies.
Carolyn J. Dean
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520219953
- eISBN:
- 9780520923485
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520219953.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
How did interwar commentators in France reconceive the meaning of pornography such that it thematized new fears about sexual deviance and, more generally, moral decline? What is the relationship ...
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How did interwar commentators in France reconceive the meaning of pornography such that it thematized new fears about sexual deviance and, more generally, moral decline? What is the relationship between fantasies about pornography and the remaking of the integral body after World War I? This chapter addresses these questions by demonstrating how the perception that pornography was an identifiable body of material slowly dissipated as critics became increasingly alarmed at pornography's proliferation. Historians have recently conceived of this proliferation as a symptom of democratization. In so doing, they challenge an older vision, best represented by the historians Montgomery Hyde and Giuseppe Lo Duca, who both argued that pornography was the product of repressive social attitudes and policies. The relationship between pornography and perversion constituted a new rhetorical strategy to preserve the boundaries between a purportedly pure social body and pornography, which came most dramatically under siege after the Great War.Less
How did interwar commentators in France reconceive the meaning of pornography such that it thematized new fears about sexual deviance and, more generally, moral decline? What is the relationship between fantasies about pornography and the remaking of the integral body after World War I? This chapter addresses these questions by demonstrating how the perception that pornography was an identifiable body of material slowly dissipated as critics became increasingly alarmed at pornography's proliferation. Historians have recently conceived of this proliferation as a symptom of democratization. In so doing, they challenge an older vision, best represented by the historians Montgomery Hyde and Giuseppe Lo Duca, who both argued that pornography was the product of repressive social attitudes and policies. The relationship between pornography and perversion constituted a new rhetorical strategy to preserve the boundaries between a purportedly pure social body and pornography, which came most dramatically under siege after the Great War.
Gregory M. Pflugfelder
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520209091
- eISBN:
- 9780520940871
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520209091.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The sexological idiom made it possible to describe “same-sex love” to the corners of the external world, in keeping with the principle that the domain of the natural law, and consequently of ...
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The sexological idiom made it possible to describe “same-sex love” to the corners of the external world, in keeping with the principle that the domain of the natural law, and consequently of scientific investigation, knew no legitimate bounds. The margins to which “civilized” discourse had confined the representation of male-male sexual behavior could no longer contain its signifying potential. “Same-sex love” was one in a long list of such “perversions,” counting among its neighbors erotic phenomena ranging from fetishism and sadomasochism, which were constructs of equally recent coinage, to more mysterious abnormalities such as pygmalionism and “metatophism.”Less
The sexological idiom made it possible to describe “same-sex love” to the corners of the external world, in keeping with the principle that the domain of the natural law, and consequently of scientific investigation, knew no legitimate bounds. The margins to which “civilized” discourse had confined the representation of male-male sexual behavior could no longer contain its signifying potential. “Same-sex love” was one in a long list of such “perversions,” counting among its neighbors erotic phenomena ranging from fetishism and sadomasochism, which were constructs of equally recent coinage, to more mysterious abnormalities such as pygmalionism and “metatophism.”
