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Sexual confessions on television talk shows. Gender and medical discourse in colonial India. River Phoenix in
My Own Private Idaho. White women in a German colony. Henry James' thwarted love. What do these seemingly diverse subjects have in common?
All address, in different ways, social and cultural attempts to contain eroticism by delineating the perimeters of genders. They scrutinize the political investments in the construction of gender in such disparate locations as contemporary Hollywood, Renaissance England, colonial India and Africa, and in modern and contemporary homosexual discourse communities and in Freud's sessions with Dora.
But whether the gendering of the subject follows the dictates of conservative politics or the radical agenda of a marginalized interest, the essays reveal the erotic overflow?the flood?that cannot be contained within any one gender identity. In examining how the erotic escapes containment, this work discloses problems inherent in the intersections of gender and desire.
[ go to the Genders website ]
About the author
Carol Siegel is Associate Professor of English at Washington State University, Vancouver and author of
Lawrence Among the Women: Wavering Boundaries in Women's Literary Traditions and
Male Masochism: Modern Revisions of the Story of Love.
Summary
These essays reveal an erotic overflow that cannot be contained within any one gendered identity. They examine how the erotic escapes containment and disclose problems inherent in the intersections of gender and desire.
