Racial Camouflage: Thinking Race Apart From Sexuality: Commentary on Harris's “The House of Difference”

This article uses Adrienne Harris's (this issue) “The House of Difference, or White Silence” as a jumping-off point to think about the overlap between a queer of color critique and the poststructuralist methodology of relational psychoanalysis that Harris proposes. Although queer of color critiques have not tended to draw on psychoanalysis, they do provide ways to understand the epistemological construction of race. As such, reading Harris in conjunction with Chandan Reddy (2011 Reddy , C. ( 2011 ). Freedom With Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the US State . Durham , NC : Duke University Press .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), this article attempts to find a method for understanding race according to an epistemology that is separate from sexuality. Drawing on Harris's discussion of the unconscious and Reddy's analysis of amendments, this article attempts to make legible some of the nonoverlapping space between race and sexuality.     

The Ins and Outs of Transmasculine Embodiment: Commentary on Griffin Hansbury's “Middle Men”

This response paper attempts to explicate the more subtle levels of textual meaning contained in the linear taxonomy that Griffin Hansbury employs to introduce his readers to FTM experience. To this end, a relational interpretive strategy is used. This approach seeks to create a richer interchange with Hansbury's ideas through a discussion of the interplay between the various components of his essay and the corresponding responses of the reader. Factors that contribute to the psychoanalytic precepts supporting the unreflexive pathologizing of trans persons are outlined, including tenets basic to psychoanalytic theory and technique. Of these, the sense of gender disequilibrium that trans phenomena produces in the preconscious experience of the analyst is highlighted. As a supplement to Hansbury's reference list, a briefly annotated bibliography provides references for those interested in further deconstructing the problems of transsexuality within psychoanalysis.     

The Scholarship of Difference: A Scholarship of Liberation?

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of new scholarship depicting the diverse experiences of men and women from different classes, races, and ethnicities. This article examines the implications of this new scholarship by comparing and contrasting its core assumptions with those of both Marxism and postmodernism. Particular attention is paid to its potential as a scholarship of liberation. Within this new scholarship of difference, two types of identity politics are critically examined: those that privilege the knowledge of the oppressed and those that focus on multiple realities and polyvocality. Shortcomings of this scholarship are discussed, including the naive pluralism of idealist multiple realities approaches, the underdevelopment of analyses of social class, and the problems that arise from rejecting scientific realism and from ignoring the importance of theory for analyzing structural relations of oppression. Of this new scholarship I ask: Whither social structure? Whither truth? And whither social class?     

The Risks and Rights of Sexualization: An Appreciative Commentary on Lerum and Dworkin's “Bad Girls Rule”

This commentary wholeheartedly supports the critical observations by Kari Lerum and Shari L. Dworkin in this issue of the Journal of Sex Research with regard to the 2007 Report of the APA (American Psychological Association) Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. The APA task force makes an overwhelmingly strong point for the dangers of the sexualization of women and girls and the self-objectification connected to it. However, their discussion of the evidence is noteworthy for being one-sided, generalizing, and negatively toned. Among the arguments presented in this commentary are notions about the rather diverse and often ambiguous nature of sexualized imagery and about the all too often ignored complexity of its presumed “effects.” In addition, the issue of female sexual power and the case of sex workers are discussed. When sexualization is defined as only negative, both sex worker's rights and, more generally, women's rights to be sexual, get into a tight corner. The main contention is that sexualization is associated with risks, as well as with rights, and that any productive analysis will have to consider both.     

Uses of Perversity: Commentary on Saketopoulou’s “To Suffer Pleasure”

This commentary on Avgi Saketopoulou’s article develops her startling claim that sexual perversion may be psychically useful. It does so by elaborating the twin concepts of ébranlement (shattering) and enigmatic signifier that Saketopoulou derives from the metapsychology of Jean Laplanche in order to consider an analogy between the work of perversion and the work of psychoanalysis. If sadomasochism holds a psychically transformative potential comparable to that of clinical analysis, then on what grounds should one practice be prioritized over the other?     

Forbidden Talk: Commentary on Article by Andrea Celenza “The Guilty Pleasure of Erotic Countertransference: Searching for Radial True”

Sexual passions lie outside the bounds of what can usually be thought about and discussed. I applaud Celenza's (this issue) contribution to opening this area for discussion, but my understanding of the passionate nature of human experience requires that her relational conceptualizations be augmented by Freudian and Lacanian models of desire, the real, and jouissance. These models help us recognize that some psychic material can never be put into words or thought. Although we seek to expand thinking and speaking, a residue will always remain that is unthinkable. I suggest analytic therapists develop intimate peer support groups to enhance the individual's ability to think and talk of his or her unrecognized passions. Although necessarily inadequate, such arenas for safe exploration provide an essential addition to ongoing efforts to work both passionately and safely with vulnerable patients.     

The Analysis of “The Dead” on Feminist Approaches

This paper attempts to explore the female characters in novella The Dead. The paper analyzes three female images almost separately and it intends to illustrate feminism in Joyce's work which vividly creates many unique women.     

“What Kind of People Do You Think We Are?”: The Scenography of Gypsy Performances of Difference

In Parakalamos (a village in NW Greece) Gypsyness, historically constituted as a “disheveled otherness,” claims a space of encounter with people and actions that are “other,” but also arise from within, ossified, but also ephemeral and fleeting. By exploring the way Gypsies in Parakalamos discussed and experienced processes of identification, I shift the issue of Gypsy otherness away from the well-ordered schema of neatly divided communities usually found within Gypsy ethnography, and I am concerned with the scenography of Gypsy difference: drawing upon a more general discussion on stereotypes, identity, and difference, I explore the situatedness, instability and partial character of Gypsy performances of difference, which nonetheless cannot lie outside the topography of marginality in and through which Parakalamos Gypsies have emerged as particular historical subjects.     

The politics of death: on life after the “end of history”

In this paper, the most recent writings by Giorgio Agamben and Bruno Latour are brought into dialog by examining what light they shed on contemporary debates concerning “end of life” decisions. More specifically, the paper focuses on the debates sparked by Diane Pretty's request for a grant of immunity against legal prosecution if her husband were to assist her to commit suicide and so terminate her increasingly unbearable suffering from motor neurone disease. The aim of this exercise is to articulate the presuppositions informing two influential and radically opposed views on the contemporary reconfiguration of relationships between humans, animals and other non‐humans.     

On “Romancing with a Wealth of Detail”: Commentary on Paper by Philip Kunn

Phillip Kuhn has unearthed a great deal of new information regarding the trial of Ernest Jones in 1906 for indecent assault and in the process has cast doubt on Jones's innocence. The discussant, while praising Kuhn for this investigative work, argues that his paper is marred by a tendentious and obfuscating interpretive structure, as well as the author's refusal to address the issue of Jones's guilt or innocence.     

The Weighty World of a “Standard Bearer”: The Influence of Help-Seeking Behaviors on Feeling Pressure

Interpersonal romantic relationships are heavily influenced by societal norms and beliefs. These beliefs can place a great deal of stress on a relationship’s capacity for self-efficacy and behavioral or emotional health. Risk factors associated with individuals’ feelings of “pressure to make their relationship look good to others” were investigated. Analyses were run using a nationally stratified sample (N = 1,112) randomly selected from 1 major metropolis within each of the 10 Administration for Children and Families regions. Results produced an overall theme showing increased pressures of “relationship standard bearing” as education or income levels increase. These results serve as a useful resource to construct relationship education curriculum components, while also providing contextual frames to clinicians and family practitioners.     

What Difference Does Difference Make? The Persistence of Inequalities in Healthcare Delivery

Scholars across many disciplines have amassed a mountain of research documenting how social differences along lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality shape how those who need medical attention are cared for in the US healthcare system. Here, we aim to succinctly review a selection of studies that have considered the many ways both patients' and healthcare providers' social identities can impact care delivery. After establishing how these differences influence patient–provider interactions and patient diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes, we argue that a critical sociological perspective can help us to better understand why these inequities persist despite decades of research calling attention to them. Specifically, we suggest that research guided by symbolic interactionist and intersectional frameworks can generate more comprehensive analyses of inequality in healthcare delivery and help researchers delve deeper into the complex interactional processes undergirding disparities in care provision. We conclude by highlighting recent work that illustrates the value of this approach.     

The poverty of organizational theory: Comment on: “Bourdieu and organizational analysis”

American organizational theorists have not taken up the call to apply Bourdieu’s approach in all of its richness in part because, for better or worse, evidentiary traditions render untenable the kind of sweeping analysis that makes Bourdieu’s classics compelling. Yet many of the insights found in Bourdieu are being pursued piecemeal, in distinct paradigmatic projects that explore the character of fields, the emergence of organizational habitus, and the changing forms of capital that are key to the control of modern organizations. A number of these programs build on the same sociological classics that Bourdieu built his own theory on. These share the same lineage, even if they were not directly influenced by Bourdieu.

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“Bad Girls Rule”: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Commentary on the Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls

Feminist, critical, and postmodern scholars have long recognized sexuality as a site of power relations. The recently released Report of the APA (American Psychological Association) Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls is a welcome addition to ongoing feminist and activist conversations on how to intervene on issues of sexuality in the name of girls' and women's health. This article offers a critical interdisciplinary analysis of this influential APA report, expanding on and challenging several of its main claims. This article critiques the report as over-determining the negative impact of sexualization; offers other literatures as critical additions including feminist literature on media, consumer culture, gender, and the body, and earlier “pro-desire” feminist psychology scholarship; and critiques the task force's conflations of objectification and sexualization. The article concludes with a call for broadening feminist scholarship and activism across disciplinary boundaries to emphasize girls' and women's sexual agency and resistance, as well as sexual health and rights.     

Preconceiving Life: Response to Gentile’s “Troubling Temporalities”

When behavior is reported that objectively places the patient and others at risk and subjectively exposes the therapist to a vivid range of private experience, the challenge in maintaining a clinical stance is complicated to say the least. This complication is intensified to the degree that the clinician's aim involves understanding rather than discipline and control. To specify details of that challenge, I discuss two patients whose unsafe sexual practice confronted me. In these clinical situations, I found it useful to be mindful that bareback sex contains a range of meanings, including the search for a quality of relating that can enliven an inner deadness. Thinking this, I found it necessary to be alert to wishes for creativity as well as destructiveness. Attending to such paradoxes also required me to come up with a new way of working with countertransference: to render it an imaginary theatrical performance.