This dissertation examines the literary and activist histories of lesbian and queer communities in France from 1968 to the present, retracing the changing relationship between national and sexual identities. It contributes in several ways to debates about ‘homonormativity’ and ‘sexual democracy’ that have unfolded in France since the beginning of the twenty-first century, notably by bringing recent historical and sociological scholarship on the racialization of gender and sexuality into dialogue with literary studies. Sex, Race and the Epistemology of Desire puts well-established literary authors (such as Monique Wittig, Mireille Best, and Nina Bouraoui) in conversation with little-known queer writers and activists of color (such as the Groupe du 6 novembre and the Lesbiennes of color), studying processes of subject formation through which individuals come to understand their desires in relation to family structures and community belonging. Through historically and politically contextualized readings, it reflects on the fact that desire has often come to be understood through the lens of sexual identity, arguing that assumptions about the importance of visibility and “coming out” have tended to marginalize poor and racialized groups. Deconstructing the common opposition between “identitarian” and “non-identitarian” literature, it argues for a richer and more epistemologically-attentive approach to sexual and gender politics. It shows that this epistemological reframing is necessary to counteract mainstream media’s often reductive accounts of minority sexualities, particularly with respect to Islamic, Middle Eastern, or North African cultures.

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Thesis--Würzburg. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-163).

Thesis (doctoral)--Lund University, 1983. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-344).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-[213]). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-294). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

This thesis is an examination of sex in D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness as it relates to the social, linguistic and political elements of literary modernism. Both novels "think sex," allowing specific concepts of sex to act as methods of communication between artists and readers. By writing sex, Hall and Lawrence address the modern reader, providing a script for ideal readerly and writerly approaches to the novel. The first chapter examines contemporary cultural and gender theory's understanding of the relationship between sex and discourse and relates this to political and literary considerations of modernism. The second chapter looks at psychosexual medical texts that influenced modernism's understanding of sex and art; the final chapter examines "thinking sex" in Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Well of Loneliness by examining the content and reception of both works.

The thesis sets out to examine Hardy's representations of women in sexual and marital relationships, and to relate those representations to contemporary developments in sexual ideology and in fiction. An Introduction considers the way in which ideology exerts pressure upon literary form, and discusses the particular appeal of female characters to Hardy's imagination. The first chapter is concerned with the constitution of sexuality as a subject of public discussion, and with its decisive shift from the area of moral discourse to that of the scientific. The influence of Darwinism and of neo-Darwinism upon ideologies of sexual difference and the nature of woman is discussed, together with the ambiguous political status of much contemporary feminist thought. There follows a chapter on Hardy's experimentalism with genre and narrative voice in his early fiction, and its relation to his female characters. An examination of The Return of the Native situates it as Hardy's first attempt at a double tragedy, of a man and of a woman, intellectual and sexual. "Women and the New Fiction 1880-1900" gives an account of the development of the "Fiction of Sex" and the novel of the "New Woman", and discusses the novel of womanliness, liberal feminist fiction, and the fiction of womanhood. The challenge that these new forms and modes of writing posed to the dominance of realism in the period is discussed. The last three chapters examine Hardy's last major novels in this enabling context of the New Fiction, and focus on the experiments with narrative method that bring about a radical break between Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. A brief conclusion argues that Hardy's experimentalism must be seen in its relation to contemporary fictional practice, and not as the product of personal temperament or of his own sexual and marital experiences. The thesis ends with a bibliography of works consulted.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2000. / Advisers: Lee Eldelman; Kevin Dunn. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 288-314). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1988. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [266]-277).