Sexual Politics

Sexual Politics
Cover of Kate Millett's Sexual Politics book - PD-simple.jpg
Cover of the first edition
AuthorKate Millett
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
SubjectsGender role, literary criticism
PublisherDoubleday and Co., 1970 (US)
Rupert Hart-Davis, 1971 (UK)
Virago, 1977 (UK)
University of Illinois Press, 2000 (US)
Publication date
1970
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages393
ISBN0-385-05292-8
OCLC88446

Sexual Politics is a 1970 book by American writer and activist Kate Millett, based on her PhD dissertation.[1][2] It is regarded as a classic of feminism and one of radical feminism's key texts. Sexual Politics analyses the subjugation of women in prominent art and literature in the 20th century, specifically looking at the ubiquity of male domination in culture.

Summary

Millett argues that "sex has a frequently neglected political aspect" and goes on to discuss the role that patriarchy plays in sexual relations, looking especially at the works of D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer. Millett argues that these authors view and discuss sex in a patriarchal and sexist way. In contrast, she applauds the more nuanced gender politics of homosexual writer Jean Genet. Other writers discussed at length include Sigmund Freud, George Meredith, John Ruskin, and John Stuart Mill.

Influences

Sexual Politics was largely influenced by Simone De Beauvoir's 1949 book The Second Sex, although De Beauvoir's text is known for being more intellectually-focused and less emotionally invigorating than Millett's text.[3]

Reception

Sexual Politics has been seen as a classic feminist text, said to be "the first book of academic feminist literary criticism",[1] and "one of the first feminist books of this decade to raise nationwide male ire",[4] though like Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970), its status has declined.[5] Sexual Politics was an important theoretical touchstone for the second wave feminism of the 1970s. It was also extremely controversial. Norman Mailer, whose work, especially his novel An American Dream (1965), had been criticised by Millett, wrote the article “The Prisoner of Sex” in Harper's Magazine in response, attacking Millett's claims and defending Miller and Lawrence,[6][7] and later extensively attacked her writings in his non-fiction book of the same name.[8]

The psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell argues that Millett, like many other feminists, misreads Freud and misunderstands the implications of psychoanalytic theory for feminism.[9] Christina Hoff Sommers writes that, by teaching women that politics is "essentially sexual" and that "even the so-called democracies" are "male hegemonies," Sexual Politics helped to move feminism in a different direction, toward an ideology that Sommers calls "gender feminism."[10] The author Richard Webster writes that Millett's "analysis of the reactionary character of psychoanalysis" was inspired by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949).[11] The critic Camille Paglia called Sexual Politics an "atrocious book", which "reduced complex artworks to their political content". She accused it of spawning what she sees as the excesses of women's studies departments, especially for attacks on the alleged pervasive sexism of the male authors of the Western canon.[12]

The historian Arthur Marwick described Sexual Politics as, alongside Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex (1970), one of the two key texts of radical feminism.[13] Doubleday's trade division, although it declined to reprint it when it went out of print briefly, said Sexual Politics was one of the ten most important books that it had published in its hundred years of existence and included it in its anniversary anthology.[14]

뉴욕타임스는 1970년 이 책이 '여성해방의 성경'이 될 것이라고 예측한 이 책의 리뷰를 실었다.[15] 이 글은 마르시아 셀리그슨이 쓴 것으로 "우리 공적인 삶과 사생활을 생과 사적으로 생각하는 열정적인 생각"이라고 극찬했다.

에디션(불완전한 목록)

  • 케이트 밀렛, 성정치학 (뉴욕 가든시티: 더블데이, 1970)
  • 케이트 밀렛, 성정치(런던: 루퍼트 하트 데이비스 주식회사, 1971)
  • 케이트 밀렛, 성정치(런던: 비라고, 1977년)
  • 케이트 밀렛, 성정치(Urbana: 일리노이 대학교 출판부, 2000년)
  • 케이트 밀렛, 성정치학 (뉴욕: 컬럼비아 대학 출판부, 2016)

참조

  1. ^ a b P. T. Clough (1994년). 사회학적 분기별, 제35권 제3호, 제473쪽 가부장제의 하이브리드 비평: 케이트 밀렛의 "성정치"를 다시 읽는 것
  2. ^ Sehgal, Parul; Genzlinger, Neil (2017-09-06). "Kate Millett, Ground-Breaking Feminist Writer, Is Dead at 82". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-07-10.
  3. ^ Rossi, Alice S. (1997). The Feminist Papers: From Abigail Adams to Simone de Beauvoir. Boston: Northeastern University Press. p. 673. ISBN 1555530281.
  4. ^ 노르마 윌슨(1974년). 영국 저널 제63권 제6페이지 15 "주요 보고서: 해방된 용어집: 페미니스트 글의 길잡이"
  5. ^ http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/feminist-artifacts-archive-germaine-greer
  6. ^ Mailer, Norman (March 1971). "The Prisoner of Sex". Harper’s Magazine. Retrieved 2009-09-13.
  7. ^ Mailer, Norman (1971). The Prisoner of Sex. Little Brown.
  8. ^ Mailer, Norman (1971). The Prisoner of Sex. Boston: Little Brown. ISBN 9780917657597.
  9. ^ Mitchell, Juliet (2000). Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis. London: Penguin Books. pp. xxix, 303–356. ISBN 0-14-027953-9.
  10. ^ Sommers, Christina Hoff (1995). Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 23. ISBN 0-684-80156-6.
  11. ^ Webster, Richard (2005). Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: The Orwell Press. p. 22. ISBN 0-9515922-5-4.
  12. ^ 1997년 7월 25일 고등교육 연대기 C. 파글리아 "페미니스트들은 숭고하고 활기찬 이상을 실현하기 시작해야 한다"
  13. ^ Marwick, Arthur (1998). The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c. 1958–c.1974. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 687. ISBN 0-19-210022-X.
  14. ^ Millett, Kate, 1970 (2000). Sexual Politics. University of Chicago Press. pp. ix–x.CS1 maint: 숫자 이름: 작성자 목록(링크)
  15. ^ Seligson, Marcia (6 September 1970). "De Beauvoir Lessing - Now, Kate Millett". The New York Times. Retrieved March 24, 2017.