Reading, Writing, and Rewriting the Prostitute Body

✍ Scribed by Shannon Bell

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 236
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Bell shows how the flesh-and-blood female body engaged in sexual interaction for payment has no inherent meaning and is signified differently in different cultures or discourses. The author contends that modernity has produced "the prostitute" as the other within the categorial other: woman.

✦ Table of Contents

READING, WRITING, AND REWRITING THE PROSTITUTE BODY
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 READING, WRITING, AND REWRITING THE PROSTITUTE BODY
Postmodernism
Method
Deconstruction
The Genealogical Project
Radical Democracy
Performing Theory
Methodological Summary
2 READING THE HETAIRAE IN PLATO'S TEXTS
Reading from the Position of the Philosophical Clitoris
Feminist Readings of Plato
The Sacred Prostitute and Her Secularized Successor: The Hetaira
Tomb of the Sacred Prostitute: The Symposium
Burlesque Treasure: The Prostitute Rhetorician in the Menexenus
Book V of the Republic: Reread
Conclusion
3 THE MAKING OF THE MODERN PROSTITUTE BODY
Bourgeois Identity and the Not-I
Charles Baudelaire: The Prostitute as the Allegory of Modernity
Parent-Duchatelet: The Production of the Prostitute as a New Anthropological Figure
William Acton: A Moral Typology of the Bad Prostitute
The British Royal Commission on the Contagious Diseases Acts: The Encoding of the Prostitute Body
The Sexualized Prostitute Body: Pathology and Perversity
Conclusion
4 WRITING THE PROSTITUTE BODY Feminist Reproductions
Prostitution: The Public Sexual Contract
Desire, Pleasure, and Prostitution
Two Lips for Sale
Radical Sexual Pluralism: Pervert (Prostitute) Space
Conclusion
5 REWRITING THE PROSTITUTE BODY Prostitute Perspectives
The Prostitute as a New Political Subject
The Prostitutes' Rights Struggle
Prostitute as a Sexual Identity: Prostitution as Sex and Work
Prostitutes' Rights: An Appropriation of Rights Discourse
Prostitute as a Feminist Identity: The Prostitute Struggle as a Feminist Struggle
Prostitutes as Sexual Educators and Health Teachers
WHISPER
Prostitutes Anonymous
Conclusion
6 PROSTITUTE PERFORMANCES Sacred Carnival Theorists of the Female Body
Performance Art as a Postmodern Aesthetic
Feminist Performance Art
Prostitute Performance Art
Deep Inside Porn Stars: Club 90
Post Porn Modernist: Annie Sprinkle
Portrait of a Sexual Evolutionary: Veronica Vera
Merchants of Love and HARDCORE: Gwendolyn
A Particular Class of Women: Janet Feindel
Scarlot Harlot: Carol Leigh
Conclusion
CONCLUSION From Aspasia's Salon to the Sprinkle Salon
NOTES
1. Reading, Writing, and Rewriting the Prostitute Body
2. Reading the Hetairae in Plato's Texts
3. The Making of the Modern Prostitute Body
4. Writing the Prostitute Body
5. Rewriting the Prostitute Body
6. Prostitute Performances
Conclusion
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

✦ Subjects

Body Theory, Feminism, Gender Studies