Lisabeth During, "The Chastity Plot" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

Lisabeth During, "The Chastity Plot" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

In The Chastity Plot (U Chicago Press, 2021), Lisabeth During tells the story of the rise, fall, and transformation of the ideal of chastity. From its role in the practice of asceticism to its associations with sovereignty, violence, and the purity of nature, it has been loved, honored, and despised. Obsession with chastity has played a powerful and disturbing role in our moral imagination. It has enforced patriarchy’s double standards, complicated sexual relations, and imbedded in Western culture a myth of gender that has been long contested by feminists. Still not yet fully understood, the chastity plot remains with us, and the metaphysics of purity continue to haunt literature, religion, and philosophy. Idealized and unattainable, sexual renunciation has shaped social institutions, political power, ethical norms, and clerical abuses. It has led to destruction and passion, to seductive fantasies that inspired saints and provoked libertines. As During shows, it should not be underestimated. Examining literature, religion, psychoanalysis, and cultural history from antiquity through the middle ages and into modernity, During provides a sweeping history of chastity and insight into its subversive potential. Instead of simply asking what chastity is, During considers what chastity can do, why we should care, and how it might provide a productive disruption, generating new ways of thinking about sex, integrity, and freedom. Keep your eyes out for Lisabeth's next book, She Did It In Her Sleep, which focuses on the horrifying phenomenon that is comatose rape. Frances Sacks is a graduate of Wesleyan University where she studied in the Science and Society Program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episoder(496)

Anne Gray Fischer, "The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification" (UNC Press, 2022)

Anne Gray Fischer, "The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification" (UNC Press, 2022)

Anne Gray Fischer speaks about her path to and through research, including how sex workers informed her analysis of policing and state violence, the role of law enforcement in struggles over economic ...

5 Aug 20241h 12min

Alexander Sasha Kondakov, "Violent Affections: Queer Sexuality, Techniques of Power, and Law in Russia" (UCL Press, 2022)

Alexander Sasha Kondakov, "Violent Affections: Queer Sexuality, Techniques of Power, and Law in Russia" (UCL Press, 2022)

Violent Affections: Queer Sexuality, Techniques of Power, and Law in Russia (UCL Press, 2022) by Alexander Sasha Kondakov uncovers techniques of power that work to translate emotions into violence aga...

24 Jul 20241h 1min

Sarah Milton, "Ageing and New Intimacies: Gender, Sexuality and Temporality in an English Salsa Scene" (Manchester UP, 2024)

Sarah Milton, "Ageing and New Intimacies: Gender, Sexuality and Temporality in an English Salsa Scene" (Manchester UP, 2024)

The 'baby boom' generation, born between the 1940s and the 1960s, is often credited with pioneering new and creative ways of relating, doing intimacy and making families. With this cohort now entering...

17 Jul 202451min

James Mallery, "City of Vice: Transience and San Francisco's Urban History, 1848-1917" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)

James Mallery, "City of Vice: Transience and San Francisco's Urban History, 1848-1917" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)

San Francisco began its American life as a city largely made up of transient men, arriving from afar to participate in the gold rush and various attendant enterprises. This large population of men on ...

16 Jul 20241h 3min

Kevin Leo Nadal, "Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System" (Lexington Book, 2020)

Kevin Leo Nadal, "Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System" (Lexington Book, 2020)

Throughout US history, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people have been pathologized, victimized, and criminalized. Reports of lynching, burning, or murdering of LGBTQ people ha...

14 Jul 202436min

Donna Drucker, "Contraception: A Concise History" (The MIT Press, 2020)

Donna Drucker, "Contraception: A Concise History" (The MIT Press, 2020)

The beginning of the modern contraceptive era began in 1882, when Dr. Aletta Jacobs opened the first birth control clinic in Amsterdam. The founding of this facility, and the clinical provision of con...

8 Jul 202423min

Avgi Saketopoulou, "Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia" (NYU Press, 2023)

Avgi Saketopoulou, "Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia" (NYU Press, 2023)

Today I talked to Avgi Saketopoulou about her book Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia (NYU Press, 2023). My conversation with Dr. Saketopoulou begins in the clinic “one of the most s...

8 Jul 20241h 8min

Darshana Sreedhar Mini, "Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India" (U California Press, 2024)

Darshana Sreedhar Mini, "Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India" (U California Press, 2024)

In the 1990s, India's mediascape saw the efflorescence of edgy soft-porn films in the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala. In Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India (U California P...

7 Jul 20241h 21min

Populært innen Vitenskap

fastlegen
tingenes-tilstand
rekommandert
jss
rss-nysgjerrige-norge
liberal-halvtime
forskningno
sinnsyn
villmarksliv
rss-overskuddsliv
fjellsportpodden
tomprat-med-gunnar-tjomlid
rss-paradigmepodden
rss-rekommandert
vett-og-vitenskap-med-gaute-einevoll
abels-tarn
rss-bondevennen
nordnorsk-historie
kvinnehelsepodden
rss-inn-til-kjernen-med-sunniva-rose