Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of Feminism [Paperback]

Elizabeth Grosz (Editor), Elspeth Probyn (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415098033 | ISBN-13: 978-0415098038 | Publication Date: August 17, 1995 | Edition: 1

Are bodies sexy? How? In what sorts of ways? Sexy Bodies investigates the production of sexual bodies and sexual practices, of sexualities which are dyke, bi, transracial, and even hetero. It celebrates lesbian and queer sexualities but also explores what runs underneath and within all sexualities, discovering what is fundamentally weird and strange about all bodies, all carnalities.

Looking at a pleasurable variety of cultural forms and texts, the contributors consider the particular charms of girls and horses, from National Velvet to Marnie; discuss figures of the lesbian body from vampires to tribades to tomboys; uncover 'virtual' lesbians in the fiction of Jeanette Winterson; track desire in the music of legendary Blues singers; and investigate the ever-scrutinised and celebrated body of Elizabeth Taylor. The collection includes two important pieces of fiction by Mary Fallon and Nicole Brossard.

Sexy Bodies makes new connections between and amongst bodies, cruising the borders of the obscene, the pleasurable, the desirable and the hitherto unspoken rethinking sexuality anew as deeply and strangely sexy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

...this collection of critical, queer, feminist, erotic writings is exceptional, bringing embodied clarity to critical thinking. Sexy Bodies transgresses the normative stylistic boundries of academic language and prose, re-formulating rather than re-defining how we can speak and think and write... Not content to write about sex and bodies, the editors asked the contributers to write as sex and bodies... the result is energizing.... this book accepts the indefinable, engorges us and consumes us. Much like good sex.... I savour this volume for its diversity in thought, culture, style, and vision of sexuality..
–Index Magazine

Sexy Bodies is a wonderfully sexy, wonderfully smart, decidedly feminist, bold and fun book.
–Jane Gallup, author of Around 1981

Sexy Bodiesi attempts to move beyond the current unsxy state of acdemic research on the body by exploring the production of sexulities instead of their dexription... Grosz and Probyn concieve of sexuality in the broadest possible thematic and methodological term. Charmaine Eddy, Canadian Literature, Winter 2001.

About the Author

Elspeth Probyn is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Montreal, Quebec. She is the author of Sexing the Self: Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies, (Routledge, 1993). Elizabeth Grosz is Director of the Institute for Critical and Cultural Studies, Monash University, Australia. She is the author of Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, (Routledge, 1990).

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (August 17, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415098033
• ISBN-13: 978-0415098038
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,436,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)