1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910824563403321

Autore

Zeʼevi Dror <1953->

Titolo

Producing desire [[electronic resource] ] : changing sexual discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900 / / Dror Ze'evi

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley : , : University of California Press, , c2006

ISBN

0-520-93898-4

9786612771910

1-282-77191-4

0-520-90405-2

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (245 pages)

Collana

Studies on the history of society and culture ; ; 52.

Disciplina

306.7/0956/0903

Soggetti

Sex customs - Middle East

Desire

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 (p. 201-211) and index.

Nota di contenuto

The body sexual: medicine and physiognomy -- Regulating desire: sharīʻa and kanun -- Morality wars: orthodoxy, Sufism, and beardless youths -- Dream interpretation and the unconscious -- Boys in the hood: shadow theater as a sexual counter-script -- The view from without: sexuality in travel accounts -- Conclusion: modernity and sexual discourse -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

This highly original book brings into focus the sexual discourses manifest in a wealth of little-studied source material-medical texts, legal documents, religious literature, dream interpretation manuals, shadow theater, and travelogues-in a nuanced, wide-ranging, and powerfully analytic exploration of Ottoman sexual thought and practices from the heyday of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. Following on the work of Foucault, Gagnon, Laqueur, and others, the premise of the book is that people shape their ideas of what is permissible, define boundaries of right and wrong, and imagine their sexual worlds through the set of discourses available to them. Dror Ze'evi finds that while some of these discourses were restrictive and others more permissive, all treated sex in its many manifestations as a natural human pursuit. And, he further



argues that all these discourses were transformed and finally silenced in the last century, leaving very little to inform Middle Eastern societies in sexual matters. With its innovative approach toward the history of sexuality in the Middle East, Producing Desire sheds new light on the history of the Ottoman Empire, on the history of sexuality and gender, and on the Islamic Middle East today.