ABSTRACT

Representation, subjectivity and sexuality continue to be central to scholarly inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. Deciphering Culture explores their relationship, each author taking a distinct approach to the concept of 'curiosity' as a way of deciphering the working of particular cultural formations. In the process they address a variety of topics including:

* the historical formation of subjectivities, identities and differences
* cultural conduct and habits of the self
* everyday cultures and negotiation
* consumption and the body
* memory, history and autobiography
* the ethics of critical and textual inquiry.

This fascinating book will appeal to students and academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds in the social sciences and cultural studies.

part 1|35 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|10 pages

Curious histories

chapter 2|21 pages

Curious pleasures

part 2|53 pages

Gender and representation

chapter 3|11 pages

Fashioning gendered identities

chapter 4|15 pages

Fleshed by the pen

Writing and reading gender

part 3|63 pages

Reconfiguring the object of representation

chapter 6|23 pages

Problematic pleasures

The position of women as writers, readers and film viewers

chapter 7|15 pages

‘A sentiment as certain as remembrance'

Photography, loss and belonging

chapter 8|21 pages

Locomotive stomachs and downcast looks

Urban pathology and the destabilised body

part 4|64 pages

Subjective narratives

chapter 9|13 pages

Disorderly ramblings

Alzheimer's and narratives of subjectivity

chapter 10|15 pages

Sites of history and memory

Hornet Bank 1857

chapter 11|30 pages

‘Flying or drowning'

Sexual instability, subjective narrative and ‘Lawrence of Arabia'