Shame: A Genealogy of Queer Practices in the 19th Century - Paperback

by Bogdan Popa (Author)

Shame has often been considered a threat to democratic politics, and was used to degrade and debase sex radicals and political marginals. But certain forms of shame were also embraced by 19th-century activists in an attempt to reverse entrenched power dynamics.
Bogdan Popa brings together Ranci?re's techniques of disrupting inequality with a queer curiosity in the performativity of shame to show how 19th-century activists denaturalised conventional beliefs about sexuality and gender. This study fills a glaring absence in political theory by undertaking a genealogy of radical queer interventions that predate the 20th century.

Back Jacket

'Bogdan Popa's exquisite investigation gifts us with a newfound appreciation for the loving, quotidian, and sometimes snarky radicalism of our Victorian forebears. In our shame, shows Popa, we - theorists, feminists, and other weirdos committed to equality and social transformation - are in the queerest of company.' Joseph Fischel, Yale University A radical reframing of shame as a vital impetus of queer feminist activism Shame has often been considered a threat to democratic politics, and was utilized to degrade and debase sex radicals and political marginals. But when and why have certain forms of shame been embraced by political activists? How has it been used to reverse entrenched power dynamics? This book brings together Rancière's techniques of disrupting inequality and a queer curiosity for the performativity of shame to illuminate how nineteenth-century activists denaturalized conventional beliefs about sexuality and gender. This study fills a glaring absence in political theory by undertaking a genealogy of radical queer interventions that predate the twentieth century. Bogdan Popa is Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics and Affiliate Faculty at the Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Institute, Oberlin College, Ohio, USA Cover image: Get thee behind me, (Mrs.) Satan!, Thomas Nast, 1872. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC. Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-1982-6

Author Biography

Bogdan Popa is Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at Oberlin College. He has been published in the Annual Review of Critical Psychology and contributed chapters to books including Cosmopolitanism and the Legacies of Dissent (edited by Tamara Caraus and Camil Alexandru Parvu, Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought, 2014).