Recommendations based on "The Routledge Handbook of Vegan Studies"

In the third volume of his acclaimed examination of sexuality in modern Western society, Foucault investigates the Golden Age of Rome to reveal a decisive break from the classical Greek version of sexual pleasure. Exploring the moral reflections of philosophers and physicians of the era, he identifies a growing anxiety over sexual activity and its consequences. At the core of this transformation Foucault found the principles of the 'care of the self': the belief that the self is an object of knowledge to be cultivated over time, and the implications this has for ethics and behaviour.

In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva offers an extensive and profound consideration of the nature of abjection. Drawing on Freud and Lacan, she analyzes the nature of attitudes toward repulsive subjects and examines the function of these topics in the writings of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and other authors. Kristeva identifies the abject with the eruption of the real and the presence of death. She explores how art and religion each offer ways of purifying the abject, arguing that amid abjection, boundaries between subject and object break down.

Sex Is As Fascinating To Scientists As It Is To The Rest Of Us. A Vast Pool Of Knowledge, Therefore, Has Been Gleaned From Research Into The Nature Of Sex, From The Contentious Problem Of Why The Wasteful Reproductive Process Exists At All, To How Individuals Choose Their Mates And What Traits They Find Attractive. This Fascinating Book Explores Those Findings, And Their Implications For The Sexual Behaviour Of Our Own Species. It Uses The Red Queen From ‘alice In Wonderland’ – Who Has To Run At Full Speed To Stay Where She Is – As A Metaphor For A Whole Range Of Sexual Behaviours. The Book Was Shortlisted For The 1994 Rhone-poulenc Prize For Science Books. ‘animals And Plants Evolved Sex To Fend Off Parasitic Infection. Now Look Where It Has Got Us. Men Want Bmws, Power And Money In Order To Pair-bond With Women Who Are Blonde, Youthful And Narrow-waisted ... A Brilliant Examination Of The Scientific Debates On The Hows And Whys Of Sex And Evolution’ Independent.

Feminism Is Founded On A Belief In Equality. And In The Past 200 Years It Has Made Incredible Gains: Paving The Way For Women To Advance Economically, Increasing Their Safety And Their Power In Society, And Advocating For Their Needs And Experiences. But Not All Women. Since Its Conception, Feminism Has Catered To A Very Particular Group Of People: Middle Class, Cis-gendered, Western, And Above All, White. And This Has Not Merely Been An Oversight, A Failure Of Inclusion. It Has Been An Active And Sustained Strategy. Rafia Zakaria Traces The Connections Between Feminism And White Supremacy From The Suffrage Movement To The 'fourth Wave' We See Today, Demonstrating How This Movement Based On Equality Has Always Been Riddled With Inequality And Exploitation. And She Issues A Powerful Call To Arms To Every Reader To Build A New Kind Of Feminism Which Will Light The Path To True Emancipation For All.

Agnès Varda, a pioneer of the French New Wave, has been making radical films for over half a century. Many of these are considered by scholars, filmmakers, and audiences alike, as audacious, seminal, and unforgettable. This volume considers her production as a whole, revisiting overlooked films like Mur, Murs/Documenteur (1980–81), and connecting her cinema to recent installation work. This study demonstrates how Varda has resisted norms of representation and diktats of production. It also shows how she has elaborated a personal repertoire of images, characters, and settings, which all provide insight on their cultural and political contexts. The book thus offers new readings of this director's multifaceted rêveries, arguing that her work should be seen as an aesthetically influential and ethically-driven production where cinema is both a political and collaborative practice, and a synesthetic art form.

In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator bell hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today. In a series of short, accessible, and enlightening essays, hoo

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it.Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre.Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate.

First published in Paris in 1949, The Second Sex by Simone de Beavoir was a groundbreaking, risqué book that became a runaway success. Selling 20,000 copies in its first week, the book earned its author both notoriety and admiration.Since then, The Second Sex has been translated into forty languages and has become a landmark in the history of feminism. Required reading for anyone who believes in the equality of the sexes, the central messages of The Second Sex are as important today as they were for the housewives of the forties.

A new edition of a classic work of history, revealing the anti-homosexual purges of midcentury Washington.In The Lavender Scare, David K. Johnson tells the frightening story of how, during the Cold War, homosexuals were considered as dangerous a threat to national security as Communists. Charges that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were havens for homosexuals proved a potent political weapon, sparking a “Lavender Scare” more vehement and long-lasting than Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare. Drawing on declassified documents, years of research in the records of the National Archives and the FBI, and interviews with former civil servants, Johnson recreates the vibrant gay subculture that flourished in midcentury Washington and takes us inside the security interrogation rooms where anti-homosexual purges ruined the lives and careers of thousands of Americans. This enlarged edition of Johnson’s classic work of history—the winner of numerous awards and the basis for an acclaimed documentary broadcast on PBS—features a new epilogue, bringing the still-relevant story into the twenty-first century.

Powers of Horror is an excellent introduction to an aspect of contemporary French literature which has been allowed to become somewhat neglected in the current emphasis on para-philosophical modes of discourse."