How does masculinity change when the body becomes unstable, desire refuses conventional categories, and technology and disease transform our understanding of identity?

Lawrence R. Schehr examines these questions through contemporary French literature, mostly queer writing concerned with sexuality, embodiment, representation and the cultural aftermath of AIDS. Moving between cyberpunk, pornography, gay literary culture and postmodern theory, Schehr considers how writers construct masculine identities outside traditional heterosexual and bourgeois expectations. His readings explore the technological body, the relationship between sexuality and selfhood, the imagined geography of gay Paris, and the ways HIV/AIDS unsettled established ideas of intimacy, reproduction and community. Particularly interesting is his treatment of queer literature as a place where masculinity is continually produced and contested rather than simply expressed.

An amazing and substantial work of literary criticism, bringing queer theory into conversation with science fiction, French cultural history and the changing politics of the body.

Liverpool University Press, 2009. First edition hardcover with illustrated dust jacket. Very good condition, with light shelf wear.