NYU Press Sex Positives?: Cultural Politics of Dissident Sexualities: 7 (Genders)

The feminist pornography debates are centered around the opposition between pro-censorship factions and the pro-sex radicals or sex positives. But what exactly is the relationship between these debates and postmodern theories of reading and performativity? What happens to these debates when they are placed in the context of colonial or U.S. racial histories? What is the history behind today's sexual radicalism? How radical is it? In the first section of Sex Positives?, Nicola Pitchford, Naomi Morgenstern, Victoria L. Smith, and Gabrielle N. Dean focus on the recent sex wars in U.S. feminism, especially within lesbian culture. Elissa J. Rashkin, Gaurav Desai, and James Smalls broaden the terms of the sex wars debates in the second section to include sexualized racial and colonial representations, from Chicana, African, and African-American perspectives. Finally, Sander L. Gilman, Laura Ciolkowski, and Laura Frost explore a variety of historical contexts for understanding contemporary forms of sexual representation and the repression of such representations. Review "An extremely interesting work, addressing an important area--the constructed nature of ethnicity. Ethnicity is, in part, a performance--something one does as well as something one is. The West Indians' unique and complex relationship with other African Americans . . . and the question of how and under what circumstances ethnic distinctiveness is emphasized and under what circumstances it is minimized is fascinating. The Bay area context, in which West Indians are vastly outnumbered by African Americans, makes for a new and different take on these issues."-Philip Kasinitz, author of "Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race" "An important contribution to discussions of identity construction in a globalized world and will be enjoyed and debated by students of ethnic studies." -"Library Journal", "Hintzen's detailed anaylsis of West Indians in the western United States opens the door to new understandings of race class boundaries and their role in maintaining social hierarchies and imbalanced social relationships among racial and ethnic groups. This richly textured ethnography will be required reading for scholars on race and immigration for years to come."-Pedro Noguera, Harvard University Graduate School of Education "Percy Hintzen has given us an intimate and richly textured portrait of West Indian community and identity in northern California. An important scholar of both global politics and American ethnic studies, Hintzen . . . deftly demonstrates how West Indians navigate the precarious terrain of race and racialization in U.S. society by negotiating their distance from African America."-Elaine Kim, University of California, Berkeley "Percy Hintzen's book has made me see so many things afresh. After reading West Indian in West, I see not only life in San Francisco differently, but also life in Brooklyn and in Silicon Valley differently. With subtlety and sensitivity, Hintzen makes us smarter about diasporas, racisms, class aspirations, marriages and public performances in contemporary America. This is an important book."-Cynthia Enloe, author of "Bananas, Beaches, and Bases" About the Author Thomas Foster is Professor of English at the University of Washington. Carol Siegel is Associate Professor of English at Washington State University, Vancouver and author of Lawrence Among the Women: Wavering Boundaries in Women's Literary Traditions and Male Masochism: Modern Revisions of the Story of Love. Ellen E. Berry is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Women's Studies program at Bowling Green State University.