Zed Books Researching Sex and Sexualities

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Researching Sex and SexualitiesBy Charlotte Morris, Paul Boyce, Andrea Cornwall, Hannah Frith, Laura Harvey, Yingying HuangZed Books LtdCopyright © 2018 Charlotte Morris, Paul Boyce, Andrea Cornwall, Hannah Frith, Laura Harvey, and Yingying HuangAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-78699-320-5ContentsAcknowledgements, x, Foreword, xi, Editorial introduction Paul Boyce, Charlotte Morris and Andrea Cornwall, 1, PART ONE KNOWABILITY, Introduction Paul Boyce, 19, 1 The insinuating body Cara Judea Alhadeff, 25, 2 Making sense of ambiguity: theory and method Eva Cheuk-Yin Li, 43, 3 Can quantitative applied sexual health research be critical and feminist? Towards a critical social epidemiology to support targeted STI testing and contraception in primary care Natalie Edelman, 62, 4 Sex shop stories: shifting disciplines in design research. ... Fran Carter, 80, PART TWO CREATIVE METHODOLOGIES, Introduction Laura Harvey, 99, 5 Body mapping, stories and the sexual rights of older people ... Catherine Barrett, 105, 6 Patchworking: using creative methodologies in sex and sexualities research Catherine Vulliamy, 122, 7 Dirty talk: on using poetry in pornography research P.J. Macleod, 136, 8 The cover version: researching sexuality through ventriloquism E. McGeeney, L. Robinson, R. Thomson and P. Thurschwell, 150, PART THREE NEGOTIATING RESEARCH CONTEXTS, Introduction Yingying Huang, 173, 9 Hesitating at the door: youth-led research on realising sexual rights informing organisational approaches Vicky Johnson, 181, 10 Sexuality research 'in translation': first-time fieldwork in Brazil Natalie Day, 199, 11 The contingency of the contact: an interpretive re-positioning through the erotic dynamics in the field ... Alba Barbéi Serra, 217, 12 Sangli stories: researching Indian sex workers' intimate lives Andrea Cornwall, 232, PART FOUR RESEARCHER BODIES, IDENTITIES, EXPERIENCES, Introduction Hannah Frith, 255, 13 Rotten girl on rotten girl: Boys' Love 'research' Anna Madill, 263, 14 Diary of a sex researcher: a reflexive look at conducting sexuality research in residential aged care Katherine Radoslovich, 279, 15 Mum's the word: heterosexual single mothers talking (or not) about sex Charlotte Morris, 298, 16 Sex and the anthropologist: from BDSM to sex education, an embodied experience Nicoletta Landi, 318, Appendix: an interview with Ken Plummer Charlotte Morris, 339, About the editors and contributors, 359, Index, 367, CHAPTER 1THE INSINUATING BODYCara Judea AlhadeffAbstractThe Insinuating Body investigates how pornography, sex work and aberrant sexualities in the United States constitute an uncanny epistemological, ethical and aesthetic condition of the in-between – an oscillation between the private and the public. My theoretical-visual work emerges from the intimacy of the 'I' as profoundly collaborative. Sexual justice actively seeks connections that may be saturated with irreducible differences. My choice to unapologetically implicate the 'I' is not a reaction to reductive vernacular, but a vital commitment to embodied thinking – an explicit integration of the private into the public. Protean sexualities, ranging from sex activism to female ejaculation, deconstruct patriarchal inscriptions on our bodies. In cultural production as in its reception, vulnerability becomes a vital intervention in public-private discourse. Since the private is construed as vulnerable and ambiguous, it 'requires' unquestioned taxonomies of regulation and normalisation. The sanctity of normalcy constitutes a hegemony of representation that colonises our relationships with our own bodies. In contrast, an uncanny erotic politics reorients our cultural notions of pleasure and vulnerability, and ultimately who has power, imagination and sovereignty over our bodies. Merging the private with the public – the ob-scene (off-stage) with the explicit – we can generate ethical individual and collective sexual justice.[