Description
Book SynopsisThis edited volume focuses on gender and love as emerging through complex “entanglements and weavings”. At a time when constructionist ideas are losing support, we interrogate theoretical paradigms to assess if constructionist notions still hold value or if new approaches are needed to address the effects of materiality and non-human agency. Without claiming any unison or definite answers, we offer situated, agential cuts into gender and love in various discursive-material phenomena, including Biblical and Rabbinic literature, ecosexual performance art, the writings of Ursula Le Guin and Angela Carter, butch identities, Bengali folktales, Ferzan Özpetek’s cinema, Golem literature, sexual pursuits in Danish nightlife, mother-daughter relationships, women warriors in the PKK, and BDSM performances. Artistic photographer Sara Davidmann has contributed to the book with the cover illustration and a creative afterword including seven photographs on the interaction between the photographer, her studio, and LGBTQ+ people.
Table of Contents List of Illustration Notes of Contributors Introduction Deirdre C. Byrne and Marianne Schleicher Part 1: Reflections on theory 1 Effects of Materiality in Israelite-Jewish Conceptions of Gender and Love: on a Necessary Synthesis of Constructionist and New Materialist Approaches Marianne Schleicher 2 For Love of the World: Material Entanglements in Ecosexual Performance Louis van den Hengel 3 “Yet the old woman will not sleep”: reading Motherhood in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Writing Deirdre C. Byrne Part 2: Materiality in creative texts 4 Butch: a Cartography of Desire Kelly Gardiner 5 Materiality and Agential Women in Animal Bridegroom Fairy Tales from Europe and Bengal Amrita Chakraborty 6 Becoming-Woman in Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve Wernmei Yong Ade Part 3: Fluid identities in heterotopic spaces 7 Ferzan Özpetek’s Cinema: a Post-Constructionist Approach to Gender and Love Dikmen Yakalı-Çamoğlu 8 Love and Monsters: gender, Autonomy and Desire in Modern Golem Literature Alana Vincent 9 Drinking, Dancing and Hooking Up: young Adults in Sexual Pursuit in Mainstream Nightlife in Denmark Mie Birk Jensen Part 4: Social relata 10 Love in Different Climates: love, Care and Practices of Intimacy among Women in Hong Kong and Britain Stevi Jackson and Petula Sik Ying Ho 11 New Arrangements of Embodiment, Materiality, Love and Gender in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party Mustafa Kemal Topal 12 Bound and Entangled: masculinities, Embodiment and the Materialisation of Gender in the Sexual Field of the BDSM Club Serena Petrella Part 5: Afterword 13 Eve, Adam and the Garden of Earthly Delights Sara Davidmann Index
