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Sex Acts Beyond Boundaries and Binaries

A Feminist Challenge for Self Care in Performance Studies

Bibliographic Data

ID12370091
AuthorsElizabeth Bell (0000-0003-1021-9287, University of South Florida, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume25
Issue3
Pages187-219
Publication date2005-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueText and Performance Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1046-2937 • E-ISSN: 1479-5760
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10462930500271752
OpenAlexW2124329174
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited77

This essay calls for heterosexual feminists in performance studies to engage in theorizing and problematizing sex, its expressions and effects, evidenced in sanctioned and mundane moments in our lives. Sex acts, at their most normative, can be engaged contextually and critically for the ways disciplinary practices and discourses operate more powerfully on women's bodies than on those of men. This essay utilizes Foucault's characteristics of scientia sexualis to critique the constructions of heterosexual women's sex lives in disciplines that study sex. It then turns to three binary constructions—sex and gender, pleasure and danger, and public and private—that must be attended to and negotiated. Three examples of such brave attention in performance studies are featured as libratory technologies of self-crafting and world fashioning

Discipline · Epistemology · Human sexuality · Normative · Pleasure · Social science · Sociology · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Psychology

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  • Torch

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  • Sex in America

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  • Adultery

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Unique citing works19
Citations per year1,06
Citation span2008 - 2026 (19)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 19
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