Your Search Results(showing 14)

    • Groups & group theory
      September 2021

      The Body of the Group

      Sexuality and Gender in Group Analysis

      by Anderson, Daniel

      The Body in the Group has been structured around the formation of a group analytic concept of sexuality, using the archaeology of Michel Foucault to move away from psychoanalytic theory, with its association to heteronormativity and pathology, on which group analysis has historically relied. The failure of group analysis to have its own theory of sexuality is, in fact, its greatest potential. It is a psychosocial theory that is able to contain failure in language and gaps in discourse, and, furthermore, can mobilise its creative potential in relation to the discourse of sexuality. Furthermore, using queer theory enables the failure of the term ‘homosexual’ by disrupting its association to heteronormativity and psychopathology that traditional psychoanalysis has emphasised. The potential of the group analytic matrix to disrupt and change discourse by conceiving of it using figurations and their associated political radicalism within language and discourse permits a radical conception of space and time. Bi-logic removes the potentially unhelpful competitive splits in power associated with the politics of sexuality and gender and, by doing so, enables multiple and contradictory positions of sexuality and gender to be held simultaneously. In addition, group analysis radically alters typical notions of ethics by being able to conceive of a psychosocial form of ethics. Likewise, queer theory raises an awareness for group analysis of the potential violence of its textual representation. Finally, analytic groups are ‘figurations in action’ when terms such as group polyphony, embodiment, discursive gaps, and norms (or no-norms) are mobilised alongside spatio-temporality and bi-logic. The group analytic literature so far has delimited sexuality and gender by over-reliance on psychoanalysis. Daniel Anderson, by utilising group analytic theory alongside the archaeology of Foucault and feminist, queer and education theory, has created an exciting and innovative way of working with sexuality in a group analysis setting.

    • Plays, playscripts
      October 2018

      SwanSong

      by Nathan Evans

      A gentleman called Joan lands in a subdued, suburban care home like a colourful, combustible cocktail. A veteran of Gay Lib, he dons battle dress and seeks an ally in the young, gay but disappointingly conventional care assistant Craig for his assault on the heteronormativity of the care system. Then, in this most unlikely of settings, Joan is offered love by a gentleman called Jim… This bittersweet play explores issues surrounding care and LGBT elders. It premiered at King's Head Theatre in 2017, was funded by the Arts Council in 2018 and shortlisted for the Carlo Annoni Playwrighting Prize 2020.

    • The Sexuality Conundrum

      Queer Culture and Dissidence in Contemporary Turkey

      by Cüneyt Çakırlar, Serkan Delice (Eds.)

      The Sexuality Conundrum aims to challenge heteronormativity, compulsory heterosexuality and homo / transphobic violence in Turkey by investigating local historical and cultural narratives, social practices and forms of relationality in creative, dissident and queer ways.The book brings together 19 essays by activists, scholars, cultural and literary critics, two interviews with Deniz Kandiyoti and Cüneyt Türel, and the work of four artists, Taner Ceylan, Nilbar Güreş, Murat Morova and Erinç Seymen. Articles by Cihat Arınç, Nami Başer, Zeynep Direk, Tuna Erdem, Başak Ertür, Veysel Eşsiz, Özlem Güçlü, Alisa Lebow, Cenk Özbay, Fatih Özgüven, Erdal Partog, EvrenSavcı, Bülent Somay, Birkan Taş, Sibel Yardımcı, and Adnan Yıldız.

    • May 2021

      We Were Dreamers

      by Simu Liu

      This is Simu Liu’s superhero origin story. Weaving together the narratives of two generations in a Chinese family who are inextricably tied to one another even as they are torn apart by deep cultural misunderstanding, We Were Dreamers traces Liu’s unlikely journey from Harbin, China to Hollywood within the context of his family’s immigration story. Liu’s parents left him to be raised by his grandparents in China while they sought a future in North America. Liu was devastated when the father he hardly even remembered returned to take him away from the only home he ever knew; culture gaps, racism, and wildly conflicting definitions of success made it difficult to become a family. Ultimately, it's Liu’s singular determination to make his dreams come true agai nst all odds that not only leads him to succeed as an actor but also opens the door to reconciliation with his parents. For by the time he is 30 – the same age his parents were when they immigrated – he recognizes that he and his parents have much in common, most notably their courage to dream, and to dream big.

    • December 2020

      Why I can't like him/her?

      by Anna Claudia Ramos, Antônio Schimeneck

      Adolescence is a time of many doubts, anxieties and uncertainties. In this phase, sexuality is unfolding, and we are going through — because everyone has gone, is going or will go through — self-questions about all conditions, all desires, including regarding sexuality. If on the one hand, we see in beautiful social networks beautiful movements of self-acceptance and discovery, on the other hand we live in a time of great obscurantism and attempt to cage the desires and contain the experiences of young people – whether at home or at school, and unfortunately, many times, with public authority initiative. This book asks this of young people, who often find themselves trapped by a cultural need (or family pressure) to create heteronormative bonds, when, in fact, they feel the desire for people of the same sex. But this book also understands that it is necessary to take this issue to the world, so that everyone reflects on otherness, sexuality and, mainly, the many possibilities of affection and desire. Por que não consigo gostar dele/dela? is a book with two sides, two covers, four stories and many testimonials.

    • December 2021

      Queering Chinese Kinship

      Queer Public Culture in Globalizing China

      by Lin Song

      What does it mean to be queer in a Confucian society in which kinship roles, ties, and ideologies are of such great importance? This book makes sense of queer cultures in China—a country with one of the largest queer populations in the world—and offers an alternative to Euro-American blueprints of queer individual identity. This book contends that kinship relations must be understood as central to any expression of queer selfhood and culture in contemporary cultural production in China. Using a critical approach—“queering Chinese kinship”—Lin Song scrutinizes the relationship between queerness and family relations, and questions Eurocentric queer culture’s frequent assumption of the separation of queerness from blood family. Offering five case studies of queer representations across a range of media genres, this book also challenges the tendency in current scholarship on Chinese and East Asian queerness to understand queer cultures as predominantly counter-mainstream, marginal, and underground. Shedding light on the representations of queerness and kinship in independent and subcultural as well as commercial and popular cultural products, the book presents a more comprehensive picture of queerness and kinship in flux and highlights queer politics as an integral part of contemporary Chinese public culture.

    • September 2020

      The Summer of Everything

      by Julian Winters

      Wes Hudson’s summer has gotten complicated. His job at the local indie bookstore is threatened by a coffeeshop franchise looking to buy it. His family is pestering him about college majors. And he can’t stop pining over his best friend, Nico. When all three problems converge, Wes comes face-to-face with the thing he fears most— adulthood.

    • September 2024

      More Than Two, Second Edition

      by Eve Rickert, Andrea Zanin

      “Can you love more than one person?” A lot of conversations about nonmonogamy start this way. When we discuss “opening” relationships, contemplate whether we want to be exclusive with our partners, or introduce multiple partners to friends and family, we are asking the people in our lives, and ourselves, to contend with this question. The answer is obvious, and misleading. The love one feels in their heart and the love one expresses through daily acts of care and affection are both “love” in the true sense, but they have different requirements, present different options and produce different outcomes. More Than Two can’t promise outcomes, but it is a guide to the paths—from anchor or nesting partnerships to relationship anarchy—possible within nonmonogamy. This long-awaited second edition bridges emerging theories on attachment and relationship diversity with authors Eve Rickert and Andrea Zanin’s insight and experience. The arcs of nonmonogamous partnerships bend towards complexity, introspection and compromise—or at least they can, if we work at it.

    • Humanities & Social Sciences
      April 2015

      Same-Sex Sexuality in Later Medieval English Culture

      by Tom Linkinen

      This volume investigates the state of same-sex relations in later medieval England, drawing on a remarkably rich array of primary sources from the period that include legal documents, artworks, theological treatises, and poetry. Tom Linkinen uses those sources to build a framework of medieval condemnations of same-sex intimacy and desire and then shows how same-sex sexuality reflected“and was inflected by“gender hierarchies, approaches to crime, and the conspicuous silence on the matter in the legal systems of the period.

    • Health & Personal Development
      August 2023

      Polywise

      by Jessica Fern

      As polyamory continues to make its way into the mainstream, more and more people are exploring consensual nonmonogamy in the hope of experiencing more love, connection, sex, freedom and support. While for many, the move expands personal horizons, for others, the transition can be challenging, leaving them blindsided and overwhelmed. Beyond the initial transition to nonmonogamy, many struggle with the root issues beneath the symptoms of broken agreements, communication challenges, increased fighting and persistent jealousy. Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern and restorative justice facilitator David Cooley share the insights they have gained through thousands of hours working with clients in consensually nonmonogamous relationships. Using a grounded theory approach, they explore the underlying challenges that nonmonogamous individuals and partners can experience after their first steps, offering practical strategies for transforming them into opportunities for new levels of clarity and intimacy. Polywise provides both the conceptual framework to better understand the shift from monogamy to nonmonogamy and the tools to navigate the next steps, allowing you to not just survive in open relationships, but thrive in them.

    • October 2022

      The Pavilion for Small Mammals

      by Patryk Pufelski

      “Noodle was one of the most important people in my life, despite weighing less than a kilogram and having four legs. I also think he was the only ferret in world history to visit every chapter of the Social and Cultural Association of Jews in Poland.” (page 17) The Pavilion for Small Mammals is the lightly fictionalised diary of contemporary Polish writer Patryk Pufelski. As a young, Jewish, openly gay zookeeper with a charming affinity for things past, his book offers answers to questions you didn’t know you had. How do you nanny a baby flamingo? Is being a vegetarian cyclist really enough to be an enemy of the Polish state? What does a friendship between a twenty-something-year-old, self-declared wannabe pensioner and an octogenarian Holocaust survivor look like? Spanning almost a decade, Pufelski chronicles his journey from dropping out of university to landing a zookeeping job of his dreams. He shares not only laugh-out-loud, self-deprecating anecdotes from his personal and professional life, but also offers moving pictures of his family history, the present-day Jewish community in Poland, and life as a queer person under a socially conservative government. All the while, animals leap off the page, not least pet ferrets, tarantulas and Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs. With seemingly effortless literary wit and endearing sensitivity to those around him – “all of them animals, some of them humans” – Pufelski’s Pavilion seems to be an effortless lesson on how the diary form can combine the personal with the political into an entertaining, heart-warming whole.

    • November 2011

      On the Outskirts of Form

      Practicing Cultural Poetics

      by Michael Davidson

      Essays on modern and contemporary poetry from a cultural studies perspective

    Subscribe to our

    newsletter