Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality
Challenging what she sees as an obsession with sex and sexuality, Ela Przybylo examines the silence around asexuality in queer, feminist, and lesbian thinking—turning to Audre Lorde’s work on erotics to propose instead an approach she calls asexual erotics, an alternative language for discussing forms of intimacy that are not reducible to sex and sexuality. Beginning with the late 1960s as a time when compulsory sexuality intensified and became increasingly tied to feminist, lesbian, and queer notions of empowerment, politics, and subjectivity, Przybylo looks to feminist political celibacy/asexuality, lesbian bed death, the asexual queer child, and the aging spinster as four figures that are asexually resonant and which benefit from an asexual reading—that is, from being read in an asexually affirming rather than asexually skeptical manner.
 
Through a wide-ranging analysis of pivotal queer, feminist, and anti-racist movements; television and film; art and photography; and fiction, nonfiction, and theoretical texts, each chapter explores asexual erotics and demonstrates how asexuality has been vital to the formulation of intimate ways of knowing and being. Asexual Erotics assembles a compendium of asexual possibilities that speaks against the centralization of sex and sexuality, asking that we consider the ways in which compulsory sexuality is detrimental not only to asexual and nonsexual people but to all.
 
"1131010465"
Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality
Challenging what she sees as an obsession with sex and sexuality, Ela Przybylo examines the silence around asexuality in queer, feminist, and lesbian thinking—turning to Audre Lorde’s work on erotics to propose instead an approach she calls asexual erotics, an alternative language for discussing forms of intimacy that are not reducible to sex and sexuality. Beginning with the late 1960s as a time when compulsory sexuality intensified and became increasingly tied to feminist, lesbian, and queer notions of empowerment, politics, and subjectivity, Przybylo looks to feminist political celibacy/asexuality, lesbian bed death, the asexual queer child, and the aging spinster as four figures that are asexually resonant and which benefit from an asexual reading—that is, from being read in an asexually affirming rather than asexually skeptical manner.
 
Through a wide-ranging analysis of pivotal queer, feminist, and anti-racist movements; television and film; art and photography; and fiction, nonfiction, and theoretical texts, each chapter explores asexual erotics and demonstrates how asexuality has been vital to the formulation of intimate ways of knowing and being. Asexual Erotics assembles a compendium of asexual possibilities that speaks against the centralization of sex and sexuality, asking that we consider the ways in which compulsory sexuality is detrimental not only to asexual and nonsexual people but to all.
 
34.95 In Stock
Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality

Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality

by Ela Przybylo
Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality

Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality

by Ela Przybylo

Paperback(1)

$34.95 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

Challenging what she sees as an obsession with sex and sexuality, Ela Przybylo examines the silence around asexuality in queer, feminist, and lesbian thinking—turning to Audre Lorde’s work on erotics to propose instead an approach she calls asexual erotics, an alternative language for discussing forms of intimacy that are not reducible to sex and sexuality. Beginning with the late 1960s as a time when compulsory sexuality intensified and became increasingly tied to feminist, lesbian, and queer notions of empowerment, politics, and subjectivity, Przybylo looks to feminist political celibacy/asexuality, lesbian bed death, the asexual queer child, and the aging spinster as four figures that are asexually resonant and which benefit from an asexual reading—that is, from being read in an asexually affirming rather than asexually skeptical manner.
 
Through a wide-ranging analysis of pivotal queer, feminist, and anti-racist movements; television and film; art and photography; and fiction, nonfiction, and theoretical texts, each chapter explores asexual erotics and demonstrates how asexuality has been vital to the formulation of intimate ways of knowing and being. Asexual Erotics assembles a compendium of asexual possibilities that speaks against the centralization of sex and sexuality, asking that we consider the ways in which compulsory sexuality is detrimental not only to asexual and nonsexual people but to all.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814255421
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Publication date: 08/19/2019
Series: Abnormativities: Queer/Gender/Embodiment
Edition description: 1
Pages: 210
Sales rank: 585,912
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Ela Przybylo is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Illinois State University.

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS
 
Cover …...................................................................................................................................................................... i
Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................................................... ii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................................ iii
Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................................................... iv
 
Introduction: Erotics and Asexuality: Thinking Asexuality, Unthinking Sex ....................................................... 1
 
Chapter 1: The Erotics of Feminist Revolution: Political Celibacies/Asexualities in the Women’s Movement ... 48
 
Chapter 2: Lesbian Bed Death, Asexually: An Erotics of Failure .......................................................................... 95
 
Chapter 3: Growing Into Asexuality: The Queer Erotics of Childhood …………................................................ 131
 
Chapter 4: Erotics of Excess and the Aging Spinster ............................................................................................. 166
 
Epilogue: Tyrannical Celibacy: The Anti-Erotics of Misogyny and White Supremacy ....................................... 206
 
References ................................................................................................................................................................. 213
 
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews