Celibacies

American Modernism and Sexual Life

By: Benjamin Kahan

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Hardcover | 25 November 2013

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Hardcover
252 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.6

Hardcover

$351.75

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In this innovative study, Benjamin Kahan traces the elusive history of modern celibacy. Arguing that celibacy is a distinct sexuality with its own practices and pleasures, Kahan shows it to be much more than the renunciation of sex or a cover for homosexuality. Celibacies focuses on a diverse group of authors, social activists, and artists, spanning from the suffragettes to Henry James, and from the Harlem Renaissance's Father Divine to Andy Warhol. This array of figures reveals the many varieties of celibacy that have until now escaped scholars of literary modernism and sexuality. Ultimately, this book wrests the discussion of celibacy and sexual restraint away from social and religious conservatism, resituating celibacy within a history of political protest and artistic experimentation. Celibacies offers an entirely new perspective on this little-understood sexual identity and initiates a profound reconsideration of the nature and constitution of sexuality.

Industry Reviews

"Although abstinence does not exactly come off as sexy in Celibacies, Kahan succeeds in making it legible, visible and historically significant for a period that is more typically understood as one of sexual expression and revolution. Kahan does for abstinence what Rachel Whiteread's reverse castings do for negative space: both reveal the thrum of what is typically thought of as emptiness or lack." - Times Higher Education

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