Archive for the ‘Foucault: History of Sexuality’ Category
Spring Fever PANIC! and Sexuality as Living Literature
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
Spring Fever PANIC! Reading: Sexuality and Resistance as Living Literature Our philosophical and historical discussion of sexuality in American culture has been informed by renowned and canonized fiction, as well as scientific contexts and personal documents. This PANIC! reading project is a blend of theories, realities, fictions, and confessions in a theatrical, real-time, literary […]
Spring Fever PANIC! and Sexuality as Living Literature
Tags: discourse, homosexuality, language, resistance
Posted in Final Projects, Foucault: History of Sexuality, Yelena Tsodikovich | Comments Off on Spring Fever PANIC! and Sexuality as Living Literature
Response to Middlesex Books 3 and 4, and Christine Jorgenson Documents
Sunday, May 9th, 2010
“Can transvestites be cured?” asked Time in an article reporting on Christine Jorgensen (Peiss, 375). If the article were about Cal, perhaps the question asked would be: Can hermaphrodites be cured? Within these questions lies the assumption that these things – these genders – need to be cured. “In some cases of transvestitism, as in […]
Response to Middlesex Books 3 and 4, and Christine Jorgenson Documents
Tags: acceptance, binary, essentialism, gender roles, happiness, Hermaphrodites, homosexuality, identity, Jeffrey Weeks, scientia sexualis, sexual orientation, social construction, social constructivism, transvestites
Posted in Eugenides: Middlesex, Foucault: History of Sexuality, Kaitlyn O'Hagan, Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality | Comments Off on Response to Middlesex Books 3 and 4, and Christine Jorgenson Documents
Brother/Sister, Husband/Wife
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010
Brother/Sister, Husband/Wife The story that I’ve found most compelling about the first half of Middlesex is that of the narrator’s grandparents, Lefty and Desdemona. The tale of how their incestuous relationship arose is easily sympathized, their actions rendered justifiable by the circumstances from which they arose. After all, they were two siblings, orphaned while they […]
Brother/Sister, Husband/Wife
Tags: birth defects, eugenics, hereditary sexualities, incest, perversions
Posted in Eugenides: Middlesex, Foucault: History of Sexuality, Jaslee Carayol | Comments Off on Brother/Sister, Husband/Wife
Incest, Middlesex, and Intersex
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010
Incest, Middlesex, and Intersex Having only read the first two books of Middlesex, I feel this post must be about incest, a topic that Eugenides handles with incredible grace and tenderness.
Incest, Middlesex, and Intersex
Tags: childhood, family, gender roles, identity, incest, Intersex, love, social construction
Posted in Eugenides: Middlesex, Foucault: History of Sexuality, Katharine Maller | Comments Off on Incest, Middlesex, and Intersex
Identity or Disorder
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010
Though we had touched on the idea of identity in class before, I am happy that Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex throws us right into it. The debate of inter-sexuality as an “identity or disorder”, as posed by the Shenker-Osorio article, is a question still relevant today, maybe even more-so. A person’s sexual identity defines them fully in […]
Identity or Disorder
Posted in Eugenides: Middlesex, Foucault: History of Sexuality, Mila Matveeva | Comments Off on Identity or Disorder
“What I Am Is Defined by Who I Am”: Resistance in Bio-Power
Monday, April 26th, 2010
Weeks ago, we had touched on Foucault’s ideas of bio-power, but I feel it is only this week that these ideas are being played out, in primary sources and fiction. The last time I talked about bio-power was in relation to WWI and the “Keeping Fit to Fight” campaigns that promoted safer sexual activity in […]
“What I Am Is Defined by Who I Am”: Resistance in Bio-Power
Tags: bio-power, HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, power relations, resistance
Posted in Foucault: History of Sexuality, Kushner: Angels in America, Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, Mila Matveeva | Comments Off on “What I Am Is Defined by Who I Am”: Resistance in Bio-Power
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
Beyond the Pleasure Principle First, in the document “Policing Public Sex in a Gay Theater, 1995” (Peiss, 454), I found the degree of detail mandated quite interesting. Not simply “what act,” which would be the only legitimate question in regards to sanitation, but full bodied descriptions, proximity of the voyeur, and the lighting. If an […]
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Tags: ars erotica, fantasy, HIV/AIDS, pleasure, reality, truth, voyeurism
Posted in Foucault: History of Sexuality, Katharine Maller, Kushner: Angels in America, Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality | Comments Off on Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Response to Angels in America
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
Response to Angels in America “Roy: Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that” (Millennium Approaches, Act 1, […]
Response to Angels in America
Tags: HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, language, scientia sexualis
Posted in Foucault: History of Sexuality, Kaitlyn O'Hagan, Kushner: Angels in America, Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality | Comments Off on Response to Angels in America
Resistance in the Medallion
Sunday, April 18th, 2010
The way Sula’s community reacts to both her life and death is an interesting realization of Foucault’s idea that where there is power there is resistance. Sula lives her life with a sense of power. She sleeps with whomever she wants, refuses to marry, allows her mother to be placed in a home, and lives […]
Resistance in the Medallion
Tags: power, resistance, Sula
Posted in Abigail Hoffman, Foucault: History of Sexuality, Morrison: Sula, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Resistance in the Medallion
Response to Sula
Sunday, April 18th, 2010
The opening description of Medallion provides a description of power relations in clear contrast with what we had been discussing during our last class; the physical representation is reversed, since the black residents of Medallion (on a hill) look down on the white residents of the valley below them. When this reverse physical representation is […]
Response to Sula
Tags: identity, liberation, power, recognition
Posted in Foucault: History of Sexuality, Kaitlyn O'Hagan, Morrison: Sula | Comments Off on Response to Sula