Coda: Toward the twentieth century: English readers of Whitman. Sexual politics and sexual meaning ; Sex or history? ; What this book does -- ch. 1. Gender asymmetry and erotic triangles -- ch. 2. Swan in love: the example of Shakespeare's sonnets -- ch. 3. The country wife: anatomies of male homosexual desire -- ch. 4. A sentimental journey: sexualism and the citizen of the world -- ch. 5. Toward the Gothic: terrorism and homosexual panic -- ch. 6. Murder incorporated: Confessions of a justified sinner -- ch. 7. Tennyson's Princess: one bride for seven brothers -- ch. 8. Adam Bede and Henry Esmond: homosocial desire and the historicity of the female -- ch. 9. Homophobia, misogyny, and capital: the example of Our mutual friend -- ch. 10. Up the postern stair: Edwin Drood and the homophobia of empire -- Coda: Toward the twentieth century: English readers of Whitman.
Summary:
At the time of its first appearance in 1985 Between Men was viewed as an important intervention into Feminist as well as Gay and Lesbian studies. It was an important book because it argued that "sexuality" and "desire" were not a historical phenomenon but carefully managed social constructs. This insight (that actually originated with Michael Foucault) is often viewed as anti-humanist or post-humanist because it argues that men and women are simply the products of patriarchal power relations over which they have no control. By mobilizing Foucault's theories of the history of sexuality Sedgwick re-fashions Feminism and Gay and Lesbian Studies to make it seem as though Feminism and Gay and Lesbian studies are ideally situated to continue those interventions into the history of sexuality begun by Foucault.
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