Michael Foucault called sex “the explanation for everything, our master key.” In Discourses of Sexuality, fourteen distinguished scholars, artists, and critics examine sexuality from a fascinating array of perspectives. The book’s opening section reopens the question of “the history of sexuality;” it is followed by “Regimes of Knowledge and Desire,” which explores gender and sexuality in the Elizabethan period, sexual desire and the market economy during the Industrial Revolution, and Freud’s notions of sexuality of “perversion.” The next section, “The Constructed Body,” examines conceptions, representations, and implications of the body through written and visual representation. The last part of the book, “AIDS and the Crisis of Modernity,” looks at the place of AIDS in the study of sexuality, provides an analysis of Nicholas Nixon’s portraits of people with AIDS, and demonstrates the importance of rediscovering values that help us to live with human variety and social diversity.
In this anthology Stanton ( The Aristocrat as Art ) has gathered essays from several of today's most innovative historians and critics, and the result is an often enjoyable, sometimes overly academic reading of the place of sexuality in contemporary culture. All of the essays in some way engage French critic Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality . Catherine MacKinnon presents perhaps the most delightful contribution as she irreverently discusses the current state of debates over sexual and power politics. Abdul JanMohamed and Mae Henderson offer intriguing readings of the relationship between race and sexuality. Patricia Yaeger's essay examines how we talk about--or fail to talk about--giving birth. The illustrations that accompany several of the essays provide rich grounds for discussion of images of sexality in American culture. The book concludes with a hard-hitting section on the various meanings of AIDS and its impact on discussions of sexuality. Though not easily accessible, this provocative volume should find an audience among serious readers. Stanton's complicated introduction is overlong, and more of the best material could have come early in the volume.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
This book consists of a series of 14 papers originally presented as a lecture series at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities. The papers are loosely centered around a discussion of Michel Foucault's three-volume History of Sexuality ( LJ 10/15/78; LJ 12/85; LJ 1/87), with topics ranging from a discussion of the ancient Greek view of women's sexuality to an attack on the mainstream media's presentation of people with AIDS. The authors are active in the humanities; hence, their concerns and methodologies are quite different from those of social scientists. In general, this title is designed for academic libraries. Collectors in the humanities section should check the circulation of their copy of the Foucault title; if it has been used heavily, then there may be an audience for this title as well.
- Mary Ann Hughes, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
