Overview

More than any other area of late-twentieth-century thinking, gender theory and its avatars have been to a large extent a Franco-American invention. In this book, a leading Franco-American scholar traces differences and intersections in the development of gender and queer theories on both sides of the Atlantic. Looking at these theories through lenses that are both ""American"" and ""French,"" thus simultaneously retrospective and anticipatory, she tries to account for their alleged exhaustion and currency on the two sides of the Atlantic. The book is divided into four parts. In the first, the author examines two specifically ""American"" features of gender theories since their earliest formulations: on the one hand, an emphasis on the theatricality of gender (from John Money's early characterization of gender as ""role playing"" to Judith Butler's appropriation of Esther Newton's work on drag queens); on the other, the early adoption of a ""queer"" perspective on gender issues. In the second part, the author reflects on a shift in the rhetoric concerning sexual minorities and politics that is prevalent today. Noting a shift from efforts by oppressed or marginalized segments of the population to make themselves ""heard"" to an emphasis on rendering themselves ""visible,"" she demonstrates the formative role of the American civil rights movement in this new drive to visibility. The third part deals with the travels back and forth across the Atlantic of ""sexual difference,"" ever since its elevation to the status of quasi-concept by psychoanalysis. Tracing the ""queering"" of sexual difference, the author reflects on both the modalities and the effects of this development. The last section addresses the vexing relationship between Western feminism and capitalism. Without trying either to commend or to decry this relationship, the author shows its long-lasting political and cultural effects on current feminist and postfeminist struggles and discourses. To that end, she focuses on one of the intense debates within feminist and postfeminist circles, the controversy over prostitution.

Full Product Details

Author:   Anne Emmanuelle Berger ,  Catherine Porter
Publisher:   Fordham University Press
Imprint:   Fordham University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.409kg
ISBN:  

9780823253852

ISBN 10:   0823253856
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   02 December 2013
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

"Acknowledgments 1. Parabasis (Before the Act) 2. Queens and Queers: The Theater of Gender in ""America"" 3. Paradoxes of Visibility in / and Contemporary Identity Politics 4. The Ends of an Idiom, or Sexual Difference in Translation 5. Roxana's Legacy: Feminism and Capitalism in the West Notes Works Cited Index"

Reviews

<br> The scholarship of the book is a treat, as is the care with which Berger attends to distinctions or crafts a sentence. -E.S. Burt, University of California, Irvine<p><br>

GCGBPThe scholarship of the book is a treat, as is the care with which Berger attends to distinctions or crafts a sentence.GC[yen] GCoE.S. Burt, University of California, Irvine The scholarship of the book is a treat, as is the care with which Berger attends to distinctions or crafts a sentence. -E.S. Burt, University of California, Irvine Even the most practiced readers of queer theory and feminist theory--perhaps especially those readers--will find that The Queer Turn in Feminism takes them into unexpected and exhilarating critical terrain. By staging the numerous critical encounters between 'French theory' and 'American theory' that continue into the present, by offering readings that are as theoretically nuanced as they are rhetorically engaging, Anne Berger reinvigorates old debates in order to open up crucial questions still to be addressed. --Elizabeth Weed, Brown University Brilliantly exploring the paradoxes of an American feminism inspired and invigorated by French theory and a French etudes du genre stimulated by American queer theory, Anne Berger offers a fascinating romp through the vicissitudes of feminist and post-feminist ideas, performance studies, and identity politics on both sides of the Atlantic, shrewdly articulating the differences as she explores the translatability of progressive ideas. --Jonathan Culler, Cornell University

The scholarship of the book is a treat, as is the care with which Berger attends to distinctions or crafts a sentence. -E.S. Burt, University of California, Irvine Even the most practiced readers of queer theory and feminist theory--perhaps especially those readers--will find that The Queer Turn in Feminism takes them into unexpected and exhilarating critical terrain. By staging the numerous critical encounters between 'French theory' and 'American theory' that continue into the present, by offering readings that are as theoretically nuanced as they are rhetorically engaging, Anne Berger reinvigorates old debates in order to open up crucial questions still to be addressed. --Elizabeth Weed, Brown University Brilliantly exploring the paradoxes of an American feminism inspired and invigorated by French theory and a French etudes du genre stimulated by American queer theory, Anne Berger offers a fascinating romp through the vicissitudes of feminist and post-feminist ideas, performance studies, and identity politics on both sides of the Atlantic, shrewdly articulating the differences as she explores the translatability of progressive ideas. --Jonathan Culler, Cornell University

Author Information

Catherine Porter is Professor of French Emerita at the State University of New York at Cortland and former president of the Modern Language Association. She has translated more than fifty books, including Bruno Latour’s Down to Earth and Elisabeth Roudinesco’s The Sovereign Self.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions