Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization

Sexual identities are dangerous, Michel Foucault tells us. Categories of desire harden into stereotypes by which the forces of normalization hold us and judge us. In Bodies and Pleasures, Ladelle McWhorter reads Foucault from an original and personal angle, motivated by the differences this experience has made in her life. At the same time, her analysis advances discussion of key issues in Foucault scholarship: the genealogical critique, the status of the subject and humanism, essentialism versus social construction, and the relationships between identity, community, and political action. Weaving her own experience of coming to grips with her lesbian sexual identity into her readings of Foucault's most recent writings on sexuality and power, McWhorter argues compellingly that Foucault's texts should be read less for the arguments they advance and more for their transformative effect. By exploring bodies and pleasures―gardening, line dancing, or doing philosophy, for example―McWhorter shows that it isn't necessary to conform with socially recognized sexual identities. Bodies and Pleasures takes the reader beyond unexplored norms and imposed identities as it points the way toward a personal politics, ethics, and style that challenges our sexual selves.

Politics & Social Sciences

McWhorter, Ladelle

Philosophy

Indiana University Press

Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy

Does the black struggle for civil rights make common cause with the movement to foster queer community, protest anti-queer violence or discrimination, and demand respect for the rights and sensibilities of queer people? Confronting this emotionally charged question, Ladelle McWhorter reveals how a carefully structured campaign against abnormality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries encouraged white Americans to purge society of so-called biological contaminants, people who were poor, disabled, black, or queer. Building on a legacy of savage hate crimes―such as the killings of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd―McWhorter shows that racism, sexual oppression, and discrimination against the disabled, the feeble, and the poor are all aspects of the same societal distemper, and that when the civil rights of one group are challenged, so are the rights of all.

Sexual identities are dangerous, Michel Foucault tells us. Categories of desire harden into stereotypes by which the forces of normalization hold us and judge us. In Bodies and Pleasures, Ladelle McWhorter reads Foucault from an original and personal angle, motivated by the differences this experience has made in her life. At the same time, her analysis advances discussion of key issues in Foucault scholarship: the genealogical critique, the status of the subject and humanism, essentialism versus social construction, and the relationships between identity, community, and political action. Weaving her own experience of coming to grips with her lesbian sexual identity into her readings of Foucault's most recent writings on sexuality and power, McWhorter argues compellingly that Foucault's texts should be read less for the arguments they advance and more for their transformative effect. By exploring bodies and pleasures—gardening, line dancing, or doing philosophy, for example—McWhorter shows that it isn't necessary to conform with socially recognized sexual identities. Bodies and Pleasures takes the reader beyond unexplored norms and imposed identities as it points the way toward a personal politics, ethics, and style that challenges our sexual selves.

Social Sciences

Indiana Univ. Pr

Does the black struggle for civil rights make common cause with the movement to foster queer community, protest anti-queer violence or discrimination, and demand respect for the rights and sensibilities of queer people? Confronting this emotionally charged question, Ladelle McWhorter reveals how a carefully structured campaign against abnormality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries encouraged white Americans to purge society of so-called biological contaminants, people who were poor, disabled, black, or queer. Building on a legacy of savage hate crimes€”such as the killings of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd€”McWhorter shows that racism, sexual oppression, and discrimination against the disabled, the feeble, and the poor are all aspects of the same societal distemper, and that when the civil rights of one group are challenged, so are the rights of all. (2009)

Problems and solutions are given from a Heideggerian point of view for saving the earth. Contents: Heidegger and Ecological Thought; Working the Earth; The Path of a Thinking, Poetizing Building: The Strange Uncanniness of Human Being on Earth; Earth-Thinking and Transformation; Singing the Earth; The Concept of Land Ethic in Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry &amp; Martin Heidegger; and Learning to Dwell.

Heidegger and the Earth: Issues in Environmental Philosophy

Truman State University Press

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Books by McWhorter, Ladelle

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McWhorter, Ladelle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization

Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy

Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization

Racism and Sexual Oppression in Anglo-America: A Genealogy

Heidegger and the Earth: Issues in Environmental Philosophy