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(494)

Alexander Stoffel, "Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Alexander Stoffel, "Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States" (Stanford UP, 2025)

The history of queer politics in the United States since 1968 is commonly narrated as either a progressive campaign for state recognition or as a subcultural rejection of prevailing gender norms. But ...

25 Apr 20251h 1min

Tadashi Ishikawa, "Geographies of Gender: Family and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan" (Cambridge UP., 2024)

Tadashi Ishikawa, "Geographies of Gender: Family and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan" (Cambridge UP., 2024)

In Geographies of Gender: Family and Law in Imperial Japan and Colonial Taiwan (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Dr. Tadashi Ishikawa traces perceptions and practices of gender in the Japanese empire...

24 Apr 20251h 3min

Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2018)

Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2018)

Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Colum...

23 Apr 20251h 10min

Talia Mae Bettcher, "Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

Talia Mae Bettcher, "Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

What does transphobic oppression have to do with sexism, heterosexism, and racism? How does a decolonial analysis help us understand trans oppression? How are the relatively recent concepts of person,...

20 Apr 202550min

Lived Experience and the Search for Truth: Revisiting Catholic Sexual Morality

Lived Experience and the Search for Truth: Revisiting Catholic Sexual Morality

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate scoffed at Jesus (Jn 18:38), and that’s how we think about matters today in our culture—subjectively: my truth, your truth, etc. To make the argument that there is a kn...

5 Apr 20251h 13min

Julia Jarcho, "Throw Yourself Away: Writing and Masochism" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Julia Jarcho, "Throw Yourself Away: Writing and Masochism" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

In Throw Yourself Away: Writing and Masochism (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Julia Jarcho proposes that the desire to write is inextricably bound up with masochistic desires. In a series of readi...

29 Mar 202554min

Sex and Love with Robots and Chatbots

Sex and Love with Robots and Chatbots

It’s the UConn Popcast, and can you fall in love with ChatGPT? Can, and should, you have sex with a robot? We asked Professor Kate Devlin, a leading researcher on intimate relations between humans and...

26 Mar 20251h 2min

Eliot Schrefer, "Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality" (Clarion Books, 2022)

Eliot Schrefer, "Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality" (Clarion Books, 2022)

In this episode, I talk to Eliot Schrefer about his book Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality (Katherine Tegen Books, 2022). A quiet revolution has been underway in r...

6 Mar 20251h 9min

Populært innen Vitenskap

fastlegen
tingenes-tilstand
rekommandert
abels-tarn
jss
rss-rekommandert
forskningno
sinnsyn
liberal-halvtime
dekodet-2
rss-inn-til-kjernen-med-sunniva-rose
villmarksliv
rss-nysgjerrige-norge
hva-er-greia-med
fjellsportpodden
rss-paradigmepodden
vett-og-vitenskap-med-gaute-einevoll
tidlose-historier
tomprat-med-gunnar-tjomlid
psykopoden