Sexual DissidenceOxford University Press, 2018 M09 19 - 512 pages Why is homosexuality socially marginal yet symbolically central? Why, in other words, is it so strangely integral to the very societies which obsessively denounce it, and why is it history - history rather than human nature - which has produced this paradoxical position? These are just some of the questions explored in this wide-ranging study of sexual dissidence which returns to the early modern period in order to focus, question, and develop issues of postmodernity. In the process it brilliantly links writers as diverse as Shakespeare, Gide, Wilde, and Genet, and cultural critics as different as St. Augustine, Freud, Fanon, Foucault, and Monique Wittig. So Freud's theory of perversion is discovered to be more challenging than either his critics or his advocates usually allow, especially when approached via the earlier period's archetypal perverts, the religious heretic and the wayward woman, Satan and Eve. The book further shows how the literature, histories, and sub-cultures of sexual and gender dissidence prove remarkably illuminating for current debates in literary theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural materialism. It includes chapters on transgression and its containment, contemporary theories of sexual difference, homophobia, the gay sensibility, transvestite literature in the culture and theatre of Renaissance England, homosexuality, and race. |
Contents
Some Parameters | |
Becoming Authentic | |
Wildes Transgressive Aesthetic and Contemporary Cultural | |
Reencounters | |
The Politics of Containment | |
Tragedy and Containment | |
From the Polymorphous Perverse to the Perverse Dynamic | |
Perversion Power and Social Control | |
Thinking the Perverse Dynamic | |
SexualPolitical Deviance | |
Theories of Sexual Difference | |
TRANSGRESSIVE REINSCRIPTIONS EARLY MODERN | |
CrossDressing in Early Modern England | |
On the Gay Sensibility or the Perverts | |
Towards the Paradoxical Perverse and the Perverse Dynamic | |
Perversion and Privation | |
Sexual Difference and Internal Deviation | |
Freuds Theory of Sexual Perversion | |
Deconstructing Freud | |
Desire and Difference | |
Afterword | |
Name index | |
Subject index | |
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Common terms and phrases
André Gide argued Augustine Augustine’s authentic becomes binary Black challenge Chapter civilization complex concept contemporary contradiction critical critique cross-dressing crucial culture D. H. Lawrence deconstruction deviation disavowal discourse displacement dominant Dorian Gray early modern effect especially essential essentialist evil Fanon fear female Foucault Freud Freud’s theory gender Genet Gide’s heterosexual Hic Mulier Hocquenghem homophobia homosexual desire homosexuality homosocial human identified identity ideology inseparable instincts inversion involves kind Lawrence’s lesbian liberation London male man’s masculinity metaphysical Michel Foucault misogyny moral nature Nietzsche normative Oedipus complex once one’s opposite oppression Oscar Wilde Othello paradoxical perverse dynamic political polymorphous perverse post/modern potential psychic psychoanalysis psychosexual radical relation remains remarks Renaissance repression repudiation revealing says sense sexual difference significant social order society sodomy sublimation subordinate subversion suggests things trans transgressive aesthetic transgressive reinscription transvestism transvestite violent Wilde’s woman women writing