This timely volume ventures into the subject of sadomasochism in varied aspects of medieval life. Saint’s Lives and mystical treatises provide evidence of failed sadism and empowering masochism. Literary culture in the form of epics and courtly tales preserve stories of eroticised power. These exciting chapters join together to form a picture of medieval culture that is kinky in its practice and deeply psychological at its core.
Over the past twenty years debates about pornography have raged within feminism and beyond. Throughout the 1970s feminists increasingly addressed the problem of men's sexual violence against women, and many women reduced the politics of men's power to questions about sexuality. By the 1980s these questions had become more and more focused on the issue of pornography--now a metaphor for the menace of male power. Collapsing feminist politics into sexuality and sexuality into pornography has not only caused some of the deepest splits between feminists, but made it harder to think clearly about either sexuality or pornography--indeed, about feminist politics more generally. This provocative collection, by well-known feminists, surveys these arguments, and in particular asks why recent feminist debates about sexuality keep reducing to questions of pornography.
From Tattoo to Saw, this book considers mainstream cinema's representation of the viscerally dominated and marked body. Examining a shift in the late twentieth century to narratives that highlight subjection, endurance and willed-acquiescence, it probes the confluence of pain, pleasure and consent to analyse the implications of the change.
Collection of some of Lynn Paula Russell's most oustanding work which lays bare the sexual fetish of corporal punishment. The focus is on her drawings commissioned to illustrate Februs and Janus, both magazines dedicated to the act of chastisement. Also included are a number of columns written by Paula during her time as magazine editor of Janus. There is no better guide to corporal punishement as the artist herself; by word and image she brings into play her talents and a special insight born of personal experience to show the reader a world of painful pleasures.
Thanks to the publication of Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, George Groves was renowned as "the greatest nineteenth-century Plato scholar". In the reface to this book, the author says, he's chosen the characters of Plato and Socrates, as they are interesting and important characters in philosophy and history. The personality of Socrates has become legendary. Yet, the period of his greatest achievement coincided with work and life od other important philosophers. This book tells about important leaders of thought from the Socrates circles: Xenophon, Kriton, Protagoras, Parmenides, Menon and others. It may be used an as supplementary source for learning philosophy and for individual research on the history of philosophy. According to the author, this book is a sequel and supplement to his major opus "The History of Greece."
Everyone experiences pain, whether it’s emotional or physical, chronic or acute. Pain is part of what it means to be human, and so an understanding of how we relate to it as individuals - as well as cultures and societies - is fundamental to who we are. In this important new book, the first in Routledge’s new Critical Approaches to Health series, Robert Kugelmann provides an accessible and insightful overview of how the concept of pain has been understood historically, psychologically, and anthropologically. Charting changes in how, after the development of modern painkillers, pain became a problem that could be solved, the book articulates how the possibilities for living with pain have changed over the last two hundred years. Incorporating research conducted by the author himself, the book provides both a holistic conception of pain and an understanding of what it means to people experiencing it today. Including critical reflections in each chapter, Constructing Pain offers a comprehensive and enlightening treatment of an important issue to us all and will be fascinating reading for students and researchers within health psychology, healthcare, and nursing.
