Sexuality (The New Critical Idiom)

Sexuality is generally seen as perhaps the most basic of human forces, a wholly natural feature of life. In Sexuality, this assumption is challenged, as social, moral and political issues are examined in terms of their relationship to sexuality. These issues have attracted considerable theoretical and political debate, particularly over the last decade, with the concept of sexual politics. Jeffrey Weeks describes the 'deconstruction' of the idea due to the challenges of radical sociology, psychoanalysis and the new social history on one hand, and to feminism and radical sexual politics on the other. He then goes beyond this fragmantation to present a new picture of sexuality as not a destiny but a potential which is moulded by, and can be changed by, human activity. Drawing on the analyses of Michel Foucault and other modern theorists, he covers the main issues of sexuality and power, sexual diversity and the politics of identity.