The Erotic as Rhetorical Power offers a queer feminist history of rhetoric that recovers the civic contributions of women teachers in same-sex romantic friendships. Extending perspectives from ancient rhetoric to nineteenth-century progressivism, from Audre Lorde’s Black lesbian feminist theory to its present-day uptakes, Pamela VanHaitsma conceives of the erotic as an interanimation of desires that, in being passionately shared, becomes imbued with the power to forge connection and foment change.
VanHaitsma’s theory of the erotic as rhetorical power emerges from both historiographic and imaginative engagements with more than twenty archives of romantic friendships between women: Sallie Holley and Caroline Putnam, Irene Leache and Anna Wood, Gertrude Buck and Laura Wylie, and Rebecca Primus and Addie Brown. VanHaitsma considers how even as the erotic in these romantic friendships fueled the women’s rhetorical activities toward transformational ends—whether working toward the abolition of slavery, greater educational access, or voting rights—it also energized rhetorical activities that sometimes challenged but also reinforced troubling power dynamics. The Erotic as Rhetorical Power uncovers the erotic’s significance as a conflicted site of power that is central to rhetorical theory and history as well as feminist and LGBTQ+ studies.
Stallings uses funk to highlight the importance of the erotic and eroticism in Black cultural and political movements, debunking "the truth of sex" and its histories. Brandishing funk as a theoretical tool, Stallings argues that Western theories of the erotic fail as universally applicable terms or philosophies, and thus lack utility in discussions of black bodies, subjects, and culture. In considering the Victorian concept of freak in black funk, Stallings proposes that black artists across all media have fashioned a tradition that embraces the superfreak, sexual guerrilla, sexual magic, mama's porn, black trans narratives, and sex work in a post-human subject position. Their goal: to ensure survival and evolution in a world that exploits black bodies in capitalist endeavors, imperialism, and colonization.
Revitalizing and wide-ranging, Funk the Erotic offers a needed examination of black sexual cultures, a discursive evolution of black ideas about eroticism, a critique of work society, a reexamination of love, and an articulation of the body in black movements.
A masterpiece by one of the West’s best-loved authorsJust when Sacramento journalist Marty Martinez thinks his life can’t get any worse, it does. His beloved son has died of AIDS, his wife has divorced him and joined a cult, and his daughter blames him for the disintegration of their family. Then a chance medical examination reveals that he has prostate cancer. Marty faces his new role as a cancer patient with awkward grit and desperation. He is a sympathetic, utterly convincing character seeking faith in a Catholic Church as troubled as he is. He brings increased intensity to his career as he investigates a far-reaching political scandal, reunites his family in unexpected ways, and finds love with a fellow cancer patient. Grace Period is a profound and sometimes hilarious novel about living with serious illness. Marty copes with fear and the painful, sometimes embarrassing, treatment of his disease, but instead of winding down his life he finds fresh purpose and a joyful new love. Haslam brilliantly depicts the complexities of everyday life and the intricate, sometimes tortured bonds of family and friendship. In Grace Period, Haslam shows us that existence at the precarious edge of life offers not only pain and loss but hope, a chance at redemption, love, and even happiness. Grace Period is his masterwork.
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