Título: Domestic Intimacies
Autor: Brian Connolly
Sinopse: Although it is commonly thought that incest has been taboo throughout history, nineteenth-century Americans evinced a great cultural anxiety that the prohibition was failing. Theologians debated the meaning and limits of biblical proscription, while jurists abandoned such injunctions and invented a new prohibition organized around the nuclear family. Novelists crafted fictional tales of accidental incest resulting from the severed ties between public and private life, while antislavery writers lamented the ramifications of breaking apart enslaved families. Phrenologists and physiologists established reproduction as the primary motivation of the incest prohibition while naturalizing the incestuous eroticism of sentimental family affection. Ethnographers imagined incest as the norm in so-called primitive societies in contrast to modern civilization. In the absence of clear biological or religious limitations, the young republic developed numerous, varied, and contradictory incest prohibitions. Domestic Intimacies offers a wide-ranging, critical history of incest and its various prohibitions as they were defined throughout the nineteenth century. Historian Brian Connolly argues that at the center of these convergent anxieties and debates lay the idea of the liberal subject: an autonomous individual who acted on his own desires yet was tempered by reason, who enjoyed a life in public yet was expected to find his greatest satisfaction in family and home. Always lurking was the need to exercise personal freedom with restraint; indeed, the valorization of the affectionate family was rooted in its capacity to act as a bulwark against licentiousness. However it was defined, incest was thus not only perceived as a threat to social stability; it also functioned to regulate social relationswithin families and between classes as well as among women and men, slaves and free citizens, strangers and friends. Domestic Intimacies overturns conventional histories of American liberalism by placing the fear of incest at the heart of nineteenth-century conflicts over public life and privacy, kinship and individualism, social contracts and personal freedom.
Contexto da obra
Quando a classificação é mais ampla, o contexto do livro costuma depender ainda mais de autoria, tema e edição. “Domestic Intimacies”, de Brian Connolly, publicado pela editora University of Pennsylvania Press, em 2014 e com 301 páginas, integra a categoria Livros Variados. Por isso, autoria, edição e tema acabam tendo ainda mais peso na forma de apresentar o livro.
Editora: University of Pennsylvania Press
Páginas: 301
Ano: 2014
Edição:
Linguagem: English
ISBN: 0812209850
ISBN13: 9780812209853
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora University of Pennsylvania Press costumam oferecer uma imersão densa em contextos históricos e culturais, com foco em análises detalhadas que conectam ideias a realidades sociais e políticas. A leitura dessas obras traz à tona temas como conflitos medievais, transformações sociais, e a interseção entre gênero, raça e poder, sempre com um tom que equilibra rigor acadêmico e acessibilidade. O catálogo privilegia narrativas que exploram tanto eventos históricos específicos quanto reflexões sobre construções sociais e culturais, muitas vezes em períodos que vão da Antiguidade à era moderna inicial. A linguagem tende a ser precisa e o ritmo, mais contemplativo, convidando o leitor a um entendimento aprofundado, sem abrir mão da clareza.
