Disturbing Practices
History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War
9780226001616
9780226001586
9780226001753
Disturbing Practices
History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War
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 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.
Reviews
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: History and Sexuality/Sexuality and History
PART 1 / THE PRACTICE OF SEXUAL HISTORY
1 An Uncommon Project: The Discipline Problem Reconsidered
2 Genealogy Inside and Out
PART 2 PRACTICING SEXUAL HISTORY
3 Topsy-Turvydom: Gender, Sexuality, and the Problem of Categorization
4 “We Cannot Use That Word”: On the Habits of Naming, Name Calling, and Self-Naming
5 Normal Soap and Elastic Hymens: Historicizing the Modern Norms of Sexuality
Epilogue
Notes
Index
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