Description
Book SynopsisBased on the premise that people shape their ideas of what is permissible, define boundaries of right and wrong, and imagine sexual worlds through the discourses available, this book explores the Ottoman sexual thought and practices. It deals with the history of the Ottoman Empire, the history of sexuality and gender, and the Islamic Middle East.
Trade Review"Producing Desire is a major, highly original, and often surprising presentation of sexual attitudes and practices in the Ottoman Middle East. The author uses a wide variety of contemporary sources to shed new light and draw original conclusions regarding changing attitudes toward sexuality in the Ottoman Empire before and after western influences. These influences are shown to have inhibited forms of male sexual expression that had occurred more freely in an earlier period. I recommend it enthusiastically for students, faculty, and the general public." - Nikki R. Keddie, author of Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution "Using the concept of multiple scripts, Dror Ze'evi brings together into a powerfully analytical focus several sexual discourses to give us a historically grounded and nuanced story about Ottoman sexual thought and practices. No other work brings these 'scripts' together the way Ze'evi has attempted and successfully accomplished." - Afsaneh Najmabadi, author of Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity"
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Tables Acknowledgments Note on the Transliteration of Arabic and Turkish Introduction: Sex as Script 1. The Body Sexual: Medicine and Physiognomy 2. Regulating Desire: SharC{ayn}a and Kanun 3. Morality Wars: Orthodoxy, Sufism, and Beardless Youths 4. Dream Interpretation and the Unconscious 5. Boys in the Hood: Shadow Theater as a Sexual Counter-Script 6. The View from Without: Sexuality in Travel Accounts Conclusion: Modernity and Sexual Discourse Notes Bibliography Index
