Between Desire and Pleasure: A Deleuzian Theory of Sexuality

Review Frida Beckman has written an undoubtedly provocative account of the uneasy relations, even points of tension and contradiction, between feminist and queer conceptions of sexual pleasure and the deterritorializing philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari. This book successfully opens sexuality out to new conceptions and new forces that link it directly to the most pressing political questions of today., Elizabeth Grosz, Duke University Product Description Intervening into fields including posthumanist, disability, animal and feminist studies, and current critiques of capitalism and consumerism, Frida Beckman explores the possibility of recovering a theory of sexuality from Deleuze's work. She thereby makes a definitive contribution to cultural, conceptual and political debates about sexuality. From the Back Cover ‘Frida Beckman has written an undoubtedly provocative account of the uneasy relations, even points of tension and contradiction, between feminist and queer conceptions of sexual pleasure and the deterritorializing philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari. This book successfully opens sexuality out to new conceptions and new forces that link it directly to the most pressing political questions of today.’ Elizabeth Grosz, Duke University Explores the political, cultural and conceptual significance of sexual pleasure How is sexual pleasure inscribed into conceptions of the body, gender, health and of the human? Conversely, what constitutes its role in the construction of such notions? And, most importantly, how can it contribute to an expansion of what they mean? Mapping both historical and contemporary configurations of the sexual body along with its functions and sensations, Frida Beckman identifies disabling conceptions and constructions of pleasure while also searching for the possibility of claiming sexual pleasure as a constructive and politically enabling notion today. In the face of the way in which Deleuze’s theory of desire builds on a rejection of the usefulness of pleasure, this book works to construct a Deleuzian theory of sexuality that is inclusive of pleasure. Frida Beckman is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Thematic Studies at Linköping University, Sweden. She is the editor of Deleuze and Sex (2011). Cover image: The Internal Clitoris. Cover design: [EUP logo] www.euppublishing.com About the Author Frida Beckman is Professor of Comparative Literature at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her books include Control Culture: Foucault and Deleuze after Discipline (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) and Culture Control Critique: Allegories of Reading the Present (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016). She has also published extensively on Deleuze, where her books include Gilles Deleuze: A Critical Life (Reaktion Books, 2017), Between Desire and Pleasure: A Deleuzian Theory of Sexuality (Edinburgh University Press, 2013) and the edited collection Deleuze and Sex (Edinburgh University Press, 2011).