The ploy of instinct : Victorian sciences of nature and sexuality in liberal governance / / Kathleen Frederickson

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910465565203321
• Autore: Frederickson Kathleen
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New York : , : Fordham University Press, , 2014; ©2014
• ISBN: 0-8232-6252-9; 0-8232-6639-7; 0-8232-6254-5; 0-8232-6255-3
• Edizione: [First edition.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (234 p.)
• Collana: Forms of Living
• Disciplina: 156
• Soggetti: Instinct - History - 19th century; Sex - Great Britain - History - 19th century; Science - Great Britain - History - 19th century; English literature - 19th century; Electronic books.; Great Britain Civilization 19th century
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Reading Like an Animal -- 2. The Case of Sexology at Work -- 3. Freud’s Australia -- 4. Angel in the Big House -- Coda -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: It is paradoxical that instinct became a central term for late Victorian sexual sciences as they were elaborated in the medicalized spaces of confession and introspection, given that instinct had long been defined in its opposition to self-conscious thought. The Ploy of Instinct ties this paradox to instinct’s deployment in conceptualizing governmentality. Instinct’s domain, Frederickson argues, extended well beyond the women, workers, and “savages” to whom it was so often ascribed. The concept of instinct helped to gloss over contradictions in British liberal ideology made palpable as turn-of-the-century writers grappled with ; the legacy of Enlightenment humanism. For elite European men, instinct became both an agent of “progress” and a force that, in contrast to desire, offered a plenitude in answer to the alienation of self-consciousness. This shift in instinct’s appeal to privileged European men modified the governmentality of empire, labor, and gender. The book traces these changes through parliamentary papers, pornographic fiction, accounts of Aboriginal Australians, suffragette memoirs, and scientific texts in evolutionary theory, sexology, and early psychoanalysis.