The Ploy of Instinct: Victorian Sciences of Nature and Sexuality in Liberal Governance (Forms of Living) - Softcover

Frederickson, Kathleen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0823262529 ISBN 13: 9780823262526

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2014

Synopsis

It is paradoxical that instinct became a central term for late Victorian sexual sciences as they were elaborated in the medicalized spaces of confession and introspection, given that instinct had long been defined in its opposition to self-conscious thought. The Ploy of Instinct ties this paradox to instinct’s deployment in conceptualizing governmentality.

Instinct’s domain, Frederickson argues, extended well beyond the women, workers, and “savages” to whom it was so often ascribed. The concept of instinct helped to gloss over contradictions in British liberal ideology made palpable as turn-of-the-century writers grappled with the legacy of Enlightenment humanism. For elite European men, instinct became both an agent of “progress” and a force that, in contrast to desire, offered a plenitude in answer to the alienation of self-consciousness.

This shift in instinct’s appeal to privileged European men modified the governmentality of empire, labor, and gender. The book traces these changes through parliamentary papers, pornographic fiction, accounts of Aboriginal Australians, suffragette memoirs, and scientific texts in evolutionary theory, sexology, and early psychoanalysis.

About this title

About the Author:

Kathleen Frederickson is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

Review:

Frederickson engages fluidly with a wide range of literary forms, figures, and locales throughout The Ploy of Instinct. In so doing, her work provides a dynamic spectrum of thought around the implications of biological modelling for labour-, sex-, and ethnicity-oriented conceptualizations of liberal governance, both within and well beyond the Victorian era. (British Society for Literature and Science Reviews)

“A smart, rigorously researched and fascinating book that will be a rich contribution to Victorian Studies, sexuality and gender studies, and history of science scholarship.” (―Teresa Mangum University of Iowa)

The rational actor has long been considered the central figure of liberal subjectivity. In this intriguing book, which brings together queer theory and Victorian science studies, Kathleen Frederickson shows how nineteenth-century thinkers adopted instinct, rather than reason, as a desirable quality for the arts of governance. Counter-intuitive, surprising, and utterly convincing, The Ploy of Instinct is a refreshing addition to the intellectual history of liberalism. (―Lisa Moore The University of Texas at Austin)

About this edition

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0823262529
• ISBN 13: 9780823262526
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 236