Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Sexuality at the Fin de Siecle: The Makings of a "Central Problem"

Christopher E. Forth

0/5 ( ratings)

It has come to be widely accepted that "sexuality" as we know it took shape at the end of the nineteenth century, around the time that Havelock Ellis declared it the "central problem of life." Yet however self-evident Ellis's claim about sexuality might seem, the act of placing something at the center is the consequence of insistent cultural work that engages with competing views about bodies and indeed about the "life" of society. This volume explores how habits of thinking about the centrality of sex were articulated, how they engaged with pre-existing approaches to personal identity, and what competing discourses had to be displaced in order for sexuality to become as central as sexologists claimed it was. It shows that asserting the centrality of sexuality is not an innocent gesture, but one deeply implicated in a wide range of representations, practices, and experiences connected to discourses about race, gender, and other vectors of difference. Peter Cryle is Professor of French at the University of Queensland. Christopher E. Forth is the Jack and Shirley Howard Teaching Professor in Humanities & Western Civilization at the University of Kansas.

Language: English

Pages: 201

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: University of Delaware Press

Release: January 01, 2009

ISBN: 0874130379

ISBN 13: 9780874130379

Sexuality at the Fin de Siecle: The Makings of a "Central Problem"

Christopher E. Forth

0/5 ( ratings)

It has come to be widely accepted that "sexuality" as we know it took shape at the end of the nineteenth century, around the time that Havelock Ellis declared it the "central problem of life." Yet however self-evident Ellis's claim about sexuality might seem, the act of placing something at the center is the consequence of insistent cultural work that engages with competing views about bodies and indeed about the "life" of society. This volume explores how habits of thinking about the centrality of sex were articulated, how they engaged with pre-existing approaches to personal identity, and what competing discourses had to be displaced in order for sexuality to become as central as sexologists claimed it was. It shows that asserting the centrality of sexuality is not an innocent gesture, but one deeply implicated in a wide range of representations, practices, and experiences connected to discourses about race, gender, and other vectors of difference. Peter Cryle is Professor of French at the University of Queensland. Christopher E. Forth is the Jack and Shirley Howard Teaching Professor in Humanities & Western Civilization at the University of Kansas.

Language: English

Pages: 201

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: University of Delaware Press

Release: January 01, 2009

ISBN: 0874130379

ISBN 13: 9780874130379

More books from Christopher E. Forth

Civilization and its Malcontents: Masculinity and the Body in the Modern West

The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Fat: Culture and Materiality

3.2/5 ( ratings)

Cultures of the Abdomen: Diet, Digestion, and Fat in the Modern World

3.3/5 ( ratings)

Confronting Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle France: Bodies, Minds and Gender

4.5/5 ( ratings)

Zarathustra in Paris: The Nietzsche Vogue in France, 1891-1918

French Masculinities: History, Politics and Culture

Body Parts: Critical Explorations in Corporeality

Honour, Violence and Emotions in History

Rate this book!

Write a review?