The Frail Social Body
Subtitle: Pornography, Homosexuality, and Other Fantasies in Interwar France
Edition: 1 edition
Series: Studies on the History of Society and Culture
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: January 8, 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 275
ISBN-13: 9780520219953
Subjects: Gender studies; Literary studies: from c 1900 -; Sexual behaviour; Social history; 20th century; c 1800 to c 1900; Human Sexuality; Sociology - General; Psychology Of Sexuality; Sex Relations; Social Science; History - General History; Sociology; Sex (Psychology); Pornography; Archaeology; Europe - France; Gay Studies; History / General; Psychology; France; Homosexuality
First sentence: How did interwar commentators reconceive the meaning of pornography such that it thematized new fears about sexual deviance and more generally, moral decline?
Description: "In the aftermath of the violence and trauma experienced by France during World War I, French cultural critics - journalists, novelists, doctors, and legislators, among others - worked to rehabilitate the social body, one they now perceived to be fragile and porous. Carolyn J. Dean shows how these critics attempted to reconstruct the "bodily integrity" of the nation by pointing to the dangers of homosexuality and pornography.

Dean's work demonstrates the importance of this concept of bodily integrity in France and shows how it was ultimately used to define first-class citizenship."--BOOK JACKET.