Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories

'This is a book about the exhilaration and the catastrophe of embodiment. Analyzing different instances of injured bodies, Peggy Phelan considers what sustained attention to the affective force of trauma might yield for critical theory. Advocating what she calls "performative writing", she creates an extraordinary fusion of critical and creative thinking which erodes the distinction between art and theory, fact and fiction.

The bodies she examines here include Christ's, as represented in Caravaggio's painting The Incredulity of St Thomas, Anita Hill's and Clarence Thomas's bodies as they were performed during the Senate hearings, the disinterred body of the Rose Theatre, exemplary bodies reconstructed through psychoanalytic talking cures, and the filmic bodies created by Tom Joslin, Mark Massi, and Peter Friedman in Silverlake Life: The View From Here.' - from publisher's website

Access level

Onsite

author

Peggy PHELAN

publisher

Routledge (London, United Kingdom)

Location code

REF.PHP5

Language

English

Keyword

cultural studies, psychology, body, sexuality

Publication/Creation date

1997

No of pages

187

ISBN / ISSN

9780415147590

No of copies

Content type

monograph

Chapter headings

Introduction: This Book's Body

Whole Wounds: Bodies at the Vanishing Point

Immobile Legs, Stalled Words: Psychoanalysis and Moving Deaths

Uncovered Rectums: Disinterring the Rose Theatre

Bloody Nose, Loose Noose: Hearing Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas

Shattered Skulls: Rodney King and Holbein's The Ambassador

Failed Live(r)s: Whatever Happened to her Public Grief? In Memory of Rena Grant (1959-1992)

Infected Eyes: Dying Man with a Movie Camera, Silverlake Life: The View from Here

Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories

Citation

Rights statement

In Copyright

What does this mean?

This item is covered by one or more copyrights. It is available for research only or use within Hong Kong’s fair dealing rules. Please do not copy, re-use or reproduce this item without the permission of the copyright holder.

Tag

Performance Art