Passing
Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Passing for what you are not--whether it is mulattos passing as white, Jews passing as Christian, or drag queens passing as women--can be a method of protection or self-defense. But it can also be a uniquely pleasurable experience, one that trades on the erotics of secrecy and revelation. It is precisely passing's radical playfulness, the way it asks us to reconsider our assumptions and forces our most cherished fantasies of identity to self-destruct, that is centrally addressed in Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion.
Identity in Western culture is largely structured around visibility, whether in the service of science (Victorian physiognomy), psychoanalysis (Lacan's mirror stage), or philosophy (the Panopticon). As such, it is charged with anxieties regarding classification and social demarcation. Passing wreaks havoc with accepted systems of social recognition and cultural intelligibility, blurring the carefully-marked lines of race, gender, and class.
Bringing together theories of passing across a host of disciplines--from critical race theory and lesbian and gay studies, to literary theory and religious studies--Passing complicates our current understanding of the visual and categories of identity.
Contributors: Michael Bronski, Karen McCarthy Brown, Bradley Epps, Judith Halberstam, Peter Hitchcock, Daniel Itzkovitz, Patrick O'Malley, Miriam Peskowitz, María C. Sánchez Linda Schlossberg, and Sharon Ullman.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Judith Halberstam takes issue with transgender biography that "recasts the act of passing as deception, dishonesty, and fraud." Brad Epps explores the immigrant experience of interrogation upon crossing borders. Sharon Ullman looks at the early 20th-century phenomenon of male impersonation in relation to the "`New Woman'" campaign of first-wave feminists. In Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion, editors Maria Carla Sanchez and Linda Schlossberg have assembled relevant cultural criticism by 10 scholars. Familiar names like Brandon Teena, George Orwell and Charles Atlas are discussed alongside less known figures like early Mexican-American author Mar a Amparo Ruiz de Burton and a popular vaudevillian of indeterminate gender named Biscauex.