The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History
BOOK DESCRIPTION
From South Park to Kathy Acker, and from Lars Von Trier to Sex and the City, women's sexual organs are demonized. Emma L. E. Rees traces the fascinating evolution of this demonization, considering how calling the 'c-word' obsene both legitimizes and perpetuates the fractured identities of woman globally. The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History demonstrates how writers, artists and film-makers contend with the dilemma of the vagina's puzzlingly 'covert visibility'.
In our postmodern, porn-obessed culture, vaginas appear to be everywhere. literally or symbolically but, crucially, they are as silenced as they are objectified. The Vagina examines the paradox of female genitalia through the fields of artistic expression: literature, film, TV, visual art and performance art.
What happens when the female body refuses to be pathologized, eroticized, or rendered subordinate to the will or intention of another? Common, and often offensive, slang terms for the vagina can be seen as an attempt to divert attaction away from the reality of women's lived sexual experiences so that we don't 'look' at the vagina itself - slang offers a convenient distraction from something so taboo. The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History is an important contribution to the ongoing debate in understanding women's identities.
Emma L. E. Rees (2013). The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, hardcover, xii+354p., 19 illustrations, ISBN: 978-1-62356-871-9.
