The ploy of instinct : Victorian sciences of nature and sexuality in liberal governance / Kathleen Frederickson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Frederickson, Kathleen, author.

Series:

Forms of living.

Forms of Living

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Instinct--History--19th century.

Instinct.

Sex--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Sex.

Science--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Science.

English literature--19th century.

English literature.

Great Britain--Civilization--19th century.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (234 p.)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

It is paradoxical that instinct became a central term for late Victorian sexual sciences as they were elaborated in the medicalized spaces of confession and introspection, given that instinct had long been defined in its opposition to self-conscious thought. The Ploy of Instinct ties this paradox to instinct’s deployment in conceptualizing governmentality. Instinct’s domain, Frederickson argues, extended well beyond the women, workers, and “savages” to whom it was so often ascribed. The concept of instinct helped to gloss over contradictions in British liberal ideology made palpable as turn-of-the-century writers grappled with the legacy of Enlightenment humanism. For elite European men, instinct became both an agent of “progress” and a force that, in contrast to desire, offered a plenitude in answer to the alienation of self-consciousness. This shift in instinct’s appeal to privileged European men modified the governmentality of empire, labor, and gender. The book traces these changes through parliamentary papers, pornographic fiction, accounts of Aboriginal Australians, suffragette memoirs, and scientific texts in evolutionary theory, sexology, and early psychoanalysis.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Reading Like an Animal

2. The Case of Sexology at Work

3. Freud’s Australia

4. Angel in the Big House

Coda

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-8232-6252-9

0-8232-6639-7

0-8232-6254-5

0-8232-6255-3

OCLC:

890507577