Shame
A Genealogy of Queer Practices in the 19th Century
Published on 14. November 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-1-4744-4139-1 (ISBN)
Description
Shame has often been considered a threat to democratic politics, and was used to degrade and debase sex radicals and political marginals. But certain forms of shame were also embraced by 19th-century activists in an attempt to reverse entrenched power dynamics.
Bogdan Popa brings together Ranciere's techniques of disrupting inequality with a queer curiosity in the performativity of shame to show how 19th-century activists denaturalised conventional beliefs about sexuality and gender. This study fills a glaring absence in political theory by undertaking a genealogy of radical queer interventions that predate the 20th century.
Bogdan Popa brings together Ranciere's techniques of disrupting inequality with a queer curiosity in the performativity of shame to show how 19th-century activists denaturalised conventional beliefs about sexuality and gender. This study fills a glaring absence in political theory by undertaking a genealogy of radical queer interventions that predate the 20th century.
Reviews / Votes
Bogdan Popa's exquisite investigation gifts us with a newfound appreciation for the loving, quotidian, and sometimes snarky radicalism of our Victorian forebears. In our shame, shows Popa, we - theorists, feminists, and other weirdos committed to equality and social transformation - are in the queerest of company. -- Joseph Fischel, Yale UniversityMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
159 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4744-4139-1 (9781474441391)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Person
Bogdan Popa is Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at Oberlin College. He has been published in the Annual Review of Critical Psychology and contributed chapters to books including Cosmopolitanism and the Legacies of Dissent (edited by Tamara Caraus and Camil Alexandru Parvu, Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought, 2014). This is his first book.
Content
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsForeword: "But Officer..."
Part I: Shame and Queer Political Theory
1.Queer Practices, or How to Unmoor Feminism from Liberal Feminism
The Argument
What is Shame?
Queer Genealogy
Queer Practices and Liberal Feminism
Political Theory and The Police
Why Nineteenth-Century Feminists?
The structure of the book
2. How to do Queer Genealogy with J.S. Mill
How to "Part company with the world"
Mill in drag, shame, and silence
"Barbarians" and "lunatics": harsh language and Mill's rhetoric
Conclusion
Part II: Counter-Figures
3. Disturbing Silence: Mill and the Radicals at The Monthly Repository
Unitarian Radicals and performativity
Beyond liberal shame
Mill's disturbing silence and the Fox Affair
Conclusion
4. De-policing Humiliation: Political Rhetoric in Feminist Activism
The CD Acts and Josephine Butler's rhetoric of humiliation
Mill's Testimony against the CD Acts and the policing of feminist activism
Conclusion
5. Shame as a Line of Escape: Victoria Woodhull, Dispossession, and Free Love
Woodhull's shaming and sexual transgressions
Shame as dispossession
The Police and how to close the lines of escape
Conclusion
Part III: Queering Shame
6. Does queer political theory have a future?
ReferencesIndex
Part I: Shame and Queer Political Theory
1.Queer Practices, or How to Unmoor Feminism from Liberal Feminism
The Argument
What is Shame?
Queer Genealogy
Queer Practices and Liberal Feminism
Political Theory and The Police
Why Nineteenth-Century Feminists?
The structure of the book
2. How to do Queer Genealogy with J.S. Mill
How to "Part company with the world"
Mill in drag, shame, and silence
"Barbarians" and "lunatics": harsh language and Mill's rhetoric
Conclusion
Part II: Counter-Figures
3. Disturbing Silence: Mill and the Radicals at The Monthly Repository
Unitarian Radicals and performativity
Beyond liberal shame
Mill's disturbing silence and the Fox Affair
Conclusion
4. De-policing Humiliation: Political Rhetoric in Feminist Activism
The CD Acts and Josephine Butler's rhetoric of humiliation
Mill's Testimony against the CD Acts and the policing of feminist activism
Conclusion
5. Shame as a Line of Escape: Victoria Woodhull, Dispossession, and Free Love
Woodhull's shaming and sexual transgressions
Shame as dispossession
The Police and how to close the lines of escape
Conclusion
Part III: Queering Shame
6. Does queer political theory have a future?
ReferencesIndex