Sexual Antipodes is about how Enlightenment print culture built modern national and racial identity out of images of sexual order and disorder in public life. It examines British and French popular journalism, utopian fiction and travel accounts about South Sea encounter, pamphlet literature, and pornography, as well as more traditional literary sources on the eighteenth century, such as the novel and philosophical essays and tales. The title refers to a premise in utopian and exoticist fiction about the southern portion of the globe: sexual order defines the character of the state. The book begins by examining how the idea of sexual order operated as the principle for explaining national differences in eighteenth-century contestation between Britain and France. It then traces how, following British and French encounters with Tahiti, the comparison of different national sexual orders formed the basis for two theories of race: race as essential character and race as degeneration.
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“Well-written, richly referenced, and persuasively argued, Sexual Antipodes is compelling both in the sweep of its synthetic arguments and in the bold, original claims it makes.”—French Forum
“Spanning a variety of genres such as novelistic language, political pamphlets, clandestine journalism, travel narrative, and scientific treatises on natural history, Cheek's work eloquently shows the richness of the range of discourses on sexuality and politics in early modern Europe, and the Enlightenment's complex approach to the conceptualization of national and racial identity.” —Elena Russo,John Hopkins University
“Sexual Antipodes is a bold, wide-ranging, and consequential book. Cheek has drawn important conclusions regarding the globalization of the Enlightenment sexual imagination. Featuring a triangulation among the sexual spaces of Britain, France, and the South Seas, the book conveys a complex sense of the changes that took place in the representation of sex from the early to the late eighteenth century. Sex is described as a form of cultural and conceptual ‘trafficking’ that has been ignored in analyses of colonialism that have until now focused exclusively on the staple areas of commerce, politics, and religion. Cheek's book is a much-needed corrective, and when it is read in eighteenth-century studies, comparative literature, and sexuality studies, it will place her as a powerful voice alongside other emerging scholars of sexuality.” —Srinivas Aravamudan,Duke University
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Sexual Antipodes is about how Enlightenment print culture built modern national and racial identity out of images of sexual order and disorder in public life. It examines British and French popular journalism, utopian fiction and travel accounts about South Sea encounter, pamphlet literature, and pornography, as well as more traditional literary sources on the eighteenth century, such as the novel and philosophical essays and tales. The title refers to a premise in utopian and exoticist fiction about the southern portion of the globe: sexual order defines the character of the state. The book begins by examining how the idea of sexual order operated as the principle for explaining national differences in eighteenth-century contestation between Britain and France. It then traces how, following British and French encounters with Tahiti, the comparison of different national sexual orders formed the basis for two theories of race: race as essential character and race as degeneration.
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