The Ploy of Instinct : Victorian Sciences of Nature and Sexuality in Liberal Governance / Kathleen Frederickson.
Frederickson, Kathleen, author.
2014
Available Online

Linked e-resources

Linked Resource Online Access

Details

Title The Ploy of Instinct : Victorian Sciences of Nature and Sexuality in Liberal Governance / Kathleen Frederickson.
Author Frederickson, Kathleen, author.
ISBN 9780823262540
DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823262540
Published New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2014]
Copyright ©2014
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (236 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers 10.1515/9780823262540 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification 156
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.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
Series Forms of Living
In Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
Available in Other Form print 9780823262526
Linked Resources Online Access
Record Appears in Online Resources > Ebooks
All Resources
Frontmatter
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

Browse Subjects

Show more subjects...

Statistics

from
to
Export