Desired States: Sex, Gender, and Political Culture in Chile (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780813597218)

Desired States challenges the notion that in some cultures, sex and sexuality have become privatized and located in individual subjectivity rather than in public political practices and institutions. Instead, the book contends that desire is a central aspect of political culture. Based on fieldwork and archival research, Frazier explores the gendered and sexualized dynamics of political culture in Chile, an imperialist context, asking how people connect with and become mobilized in political projects in some cases or, in others, become disaffected or are excluded to varying degrees. The book situates the state in a rich and changing context of transnational and localized movements, imperialist interests, geo-political conflicts, and market forces to explore the broader struggles of desiring subjects, especially in those dimensions of life that are explicitly sexual and amorous: free love movements, marriage, the sixties' sexual revolution in Cold War contexts, prostitution policies, ideas about men's gratification, the charisma of leaders, and sexual/domestic violence against women.


Author: Lessie Jo Frazier
ISBN-10: 0813597218
ISBN-13: 9780813597218
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/12/2020
Pages: 290
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.90d