The Explanation For Everything: Essays on Sexual Subjectivity

The Explanation For Everything: Essays on Sexual Subjectivity

by Paul Morrison
The Explanation For Everything: Essays on Sexual Subjectivity

The Explanation For Everything: Essays on Sexual Subjectivity

by Paul Morrison

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Overview

"The claim 'I'm straight' is the psychosexual analogue of 'The check is in the mail': if you need to say it, your credit or creditability is already in doubt." So begins Paul Morrison's dazzling polemic, which takes as its point of departure Foucault's famous remark that sex is "the explanation for everything."
Combining psychoanalytic, literary, and queer theory, The Explanation for Everything seeks to account for the explanatory power attributed to homosexuality, and its relationship to compulsory heterosexuality. In the process, Morrison presents a scathing indictment of psychoanalysis and its impact on the study of sexuality. In bold but graceful leaps, Morrison applies his critique to a diversity of examples: subjectivity in Oscar Wilde, the cultural construction and reception of AIDS, the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, the practice of bodybuilding, and the contemporary reception of the sexual politics of fascism.
Analytical, witty and astute, The Explanation for Everything will challenge and amuse, establishing Paul Morrison as one of our most exciting cultural critics.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814756744
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 02/01/2002
Series: Sexual Cultures , #31
Pages: 205
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Paul Morrison is Associate Professor of English at Brandeis University. He is the author of The Poetics of Fascism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Paul de Man.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgmentsix
1The Explanation for Everything (Bad)1
2Motion Pictures17
i.Generic Bodies19
ii.Novel Sensation36
iii.Cut/Uncut45
3End Pleasure54
i.The Wicked Queen's Anxieties58
ii.Their Vehement Sexual Customs63
iii.Radical Heterosexuality, Heterosexuality Manque72
4Coffee Table Sex82
i.Photography Is Like Perversion85
ii.The Sadomasochism of Everyday Life94
iii.There Is Too Much Sexual Relation102
5Muscles113
i.Matter and Ghost116
ii.Face Value119
iii.Phallic Subjectivity132
6Lavender Fascists140
i.To Lose Both Parents146
ii.There Are No Bad Heterosexuals151
iii.Talk Grows of the Government Being Out to Get Blacks (Or, In Defense of Paranoia)161
Notes175
Index197
About the Author205

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Though the irony of his title refuses the explanatory totalization that would follow from taking it straight, Paul Morrison's dazzlingly ferocious new book explains beyond all doubt why those of us familiar with his wide-ranging work recognize him as the most profoundly and provocatively Wildean critic of his generation."

-Lee Edelman,Tufts University

"Why is it that our culture's explanation for everything is homosexuality? In this judiciously argued and brilliantly conceived study, Morrison offers a compelling explanation of his own. The specter of "the homosexual" provides the perfect political scapegoat for acts of injustice that are, in truth, systemic and social in nature. If there is a culprit in contemporary scientific and cultural explanations of modern villainy, it is the predilection of critics themselves to find latent homosexuality here, there, and everywhere. A shrewd, quick-witted, and penetrating book."

-Diana Fuss,Princeton University

"Paul Morrison brings a refreshing and unique style to the practice of queer theory. With his extravagant attitude, epigrammatic wit, and political drive, he unsettles the complacencies of heterosexual certainty and gay self-congratulation alike, while forcing us to confront the breadth and depth of homophobia in our culture. Whether he is exploding liberal pieties or exhorting us not to allow sex to degenerate into love, Morrison startles and instructs. A challenging and necessary book."

-David M. Halperin,University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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