Discourses of Sexuality: From Aristotle to AIDS (Ratio: Institute For The Humanities)

Michael Foucault called sex “the explanation for everything, our master key.” In Discourses of Sexuality, fourteen distinguished scholars, artists, and critics examine sexuality from a fascinating array of perspectives. The book’s opening section reopens the question of “the history of sexuality;” it is followed by “Regimes of Knowledge and Desire,” which explores gender and sexuality in the Elizabethan period, sexual desire and the market economy during the Industrial Revolution, and Freud’s notions of sexuality of “perversion.” The next section, “The Constructed Body,” examines conceptions, representations, and implications of the body through written and visual representation. The last part of the book, “AIDS and the Crisis of Modernity,” looks at the place of AIDS in the study of sexuality, provides an analysis of Nicholas Nixon’s portraits of people with AIDS, and demonstrates the importance of rediscovering values that help us to live with human variety and social diversity.