Disturbing Practices – History, Sexuality, and Women′s Experience of Modern War (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith) - Hardcover

Doan, Laura

3.9

20 ratings by Goodreads

9780226001586: Disturbing Practices – History, Sexuality, and Women′s Experience of Modern War (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022600158X ISBN 13: 9780226001586

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2013

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For decades, the history of sexuality has been a multidisciplinary project serving competing agendas. Lesbian, gay, and queer scholars have produced powerful narratives by tracing the continuity of homosexual or queer subject as continuous or discontinuous. Yet organizing historical work around categories of identity as normal or abnormal often obscures how sexual matters were known or talked about in the past. Set against the backdrop of women's work experiences, friendships, and communities during World War I, "Disturbing Practices" draws on a substantial body of new archival material to expose the roadblocks still present in current practices and imagine new alternatives. In this landmark book, Laura Doan clarifies the ethical value and political purpose of identity history - and indeed its very capacity to give rise to innovative practices borne of sustained exchange between queer studies and critical history. "Disturbing Practices" insists on taking seriously the imperative to step outside the logic of identity to address questions as yet unasked about the modern sexual past.

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Review:

"Focusing on World War I in England, a time and place often associated with the emergence of a distinctive lesbian identity, Laura Doan argues instead that this was a period that had yet to develop sexual taxonomies. Rather than restore to view lesbians hidden from history, Doan gives us elasticity, inarticulateness, and a world without norms. Disturbing Practices argues eloquently for the necessity of a queer critical history that does not take its categories for granted." - Sharon Marcus, author of "Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England"

About the Author:

Laura Doan is professor of cultural history and sexuality studies at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture and editor of Sexology in Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires, among other books.

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