Dangerous Desire: Literature of Sexual Freedom and Sexual Violence Since the Sixties

by Barnett,Pamela

• ISBN13: 9780415970495
• ISBN10: 0415970490
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

InDangerous Desire, Pamela Barnett explores the jarring, frequent juxtaposition of sexual freedom and rape in American literature of and about the 1960s. Why were the social promises figured by sexual freedom in these texts consistently foreclosed by rape? Barnett argues that this literary phenomenon reflected tensions central to the historical moment. Through a cultural studies analysis of key texts includingSoul on Ice,Against Our Will,The Women's Room,The Women of Brewster Place,Meridian, andDeliverance,Barnett demonstrates how rape has been employed as a backlash against the very movements of "dangerous desire" that inspired these literary accounts--feminism, civil rights, black nationalism, and gay liberation. Provocative and courageous,Dangerous Desiredares to raise critical questions about the politics of desire, gender, race, and sexuality in this watershed era.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xi
Chapter 1 Desire and Domination: Eldridge Cleaver and the Racial-Sexual Politics of the Sixties	1	(32)
Chapter 2 James Dickey's Deliverance: Suburban White Male Nightmare or Dream Come True?	33	(28)
Chapter 3 "The Recurring Dream": Utopian Politics and Sexual Violence in Alice Walker's Meridian	61	(30)
Chapter 4 "The Anatomical Fiat": Rape and Gendering in Early Second-Wave Feminist Discourse	91	(32)
Chapter 5 "Lesbians Are Not Women": Rape as "Compulsory Heterosexuality" in The Women of Brewster Place	123	(24)
Chapter 6 Just How Far from Heaven?	147	(6)
Notes	153	(16)
Bibliography	169	(10)
Index	179