The Boundaries Of Desire

The act of reproduction, and its variants, never change much, but our ideas about the meaning of sex are in constant flux. Switch a decade, cross a border, or traverse class lines and the harmless pleasures of one group become the gravest crimes in another. Combining meticulous research and lively storytelling, The Boundaries of Desire traces the fast–moving bloodsport of sex law over the past century, and challenges our most cherished notions about family, power, gender, and identity. Starting when courts censored birth control information as pornography and let men rape their wives, and continuing through the "sexual revolution" and into the present day (when rape, gay rights, sex trafficking, and sex on the internet saturate the news), Berkowitz shows how the law has remained out of synch with the convulsive changes in sexual morality. By focusing on the stories of real people, Berkowitz adds a compelling human element to what might otherwise be faceless legal battles. The law is made by people, after all, and nothing sparks intolerance – on the left and right –– more than sex. Ultimately, Berkowitz shows the emptiness of sanctimonious condemnation, and argues that sexual questions are too subtle and volatile for simple, catch–all solutions.

The act of reproduction, and its variants, never change much, but our ideas about the meaning of sex are in constant flux. Switch a decade, cross a border, or traverse class lines and the harmless pleasures of one group become the gravest crimes in another. Combining meticulous research and lively storytelling, The Boundaries of Desire traces the fast–moving bloodsport of sex law over the past century, and challenges our most cherished notions about family, power, gender, and identity. Starting when courts censored birth control information as pornography and let men rape their wives, and continuing through the "sexual revolution" and into the present day (when rape, gay rights, sex trafficking, and sex on the internet saturate the news), Berkowitz shows how the law has remained out of synch with the convulsive changes in sexual morality. By focusing on the stories of real people, Berkowitz adds a compelling human element to what might otherwise be faceless legal battles. The law is made by people, after all, and nothing sparks intolerance – on the left and right –– more than sex. Ultimately, Berkowitz shows the emptiness of sanctimonious condemnation, and argues that sexual questions are too subtle and volatile for simple, catch–all solutions.

Do you feel people step all over you (or are you kind of the one doing the stepping)? Do you struggle with saying "no" without guilt and "yes" without resentment? If so, then time to figure out where you end and the rest of the world begins, and THE BOUNDARIES SONG will show you how.

It has become increasingly difficult to speak or even think social or legal justice in an age when words have left their moorings. Perhaps images are more stable than words; maybe images and imagery possess a certain viscosity,even a sensory quality, which prevents them from evaporating. This 'maybe' is what this book is about. The contributors to this collection explore the issue of how the Imaginary (images, imagery, imagination) has a role in the production and reproduction of 'visions' of legal and social justice. It argues that 'visions' of justice are inevitably bounded. Boundaries of 'visions' of justice, however, are also 'imaginary'. They emerge within imaginary spaces, and, as they are 'imaginary', they are inherently unstable. The book captures an emerging interest (in the humanities and social sciences) in images and the visual, or the Imaginary more broadly. This collection will appeal to scholars and students of social and legal theory, visual culture, justice and governance studies, media studies, and criminology.

This book engages with, and develops, current debates about desire and sexual identification by focusing on a wide selection of contemporary literature, film, and theory. These texts range from the novels of Alan Hollinghurst and Paul Magrs to the work of Pedro Almodovar, RuPaul, Derek Jarman, and Camille Paglia, as well as TV programs like "Ellen" and "Shinjuku Boys, " and individual films such as Collard's "Savage Nights."

The factionalism and denominationalism of modern Jewry makes it supremely difficult to create a definition of the Jewish people. Instead of serving as a uniting force around which community is formed, Judaism has itself become a source of divisions. Consequently, attempts to identify beliefs or practices essential for membership in the Jewish people are almost doomed to failure.Aiming to take readers beyond the divisions that characterize modern Jewry, this book explores the ever contentious question of "who is a Jew." Through a historical survey of the shifting boundaries of Jewish identity and deviance over time, the book provides new insights into how Jewish law over the centuries has erected boundaries to govern and maintain the collective identity of the Jewish people. Drawing on these historical strategies the book identifies the causes and reasons that underlie them, and employs these in order to help construct a guide for creating a structure of boundaries relevant for contemporary Jewish existence.

Truthfully and accurately, this book attempts to elucidate the nature and forms of China’s ancient wisdom and reinterpret its ideological significance, thereby activating its inherent vitality and promoting the construction of contemporary Chinese thought. The wisdom of China, with its own discourse system, gives unique stipulations to existence, thought and language. Confucianism, Taoism and Chan Buddhism, as the historical manifestations of Chinese wisdom, respectively express the thoughts between man and man, between man and nature, and between man and mind. In fact, these three aspects exactly constitute the whole of man’s life world. The thoughts of Confucianism, Taoism and Chan Buddhism are mainly and respectively represented in The Four Books and Five Classics, Lao-Zi and Zhuang-Zi, and Tan-Jing (The Sutra of Hui Neng). The wisdom of China, different from the non-natural wisdom of the West, is fundamentally a natural wisdom, according to which nature is the basis of human existence, thought and language. However, in early modern times, the natural history of China was confronted with an unprecedented crisis. Ever since then, China has entered the post natural era. The coexistence of Heaven and man, as the new wisdom of China, can be created in the age of globalization through preserving the living elements and eliminating the dead parts in the traditional Chinese wisdom.

What does it mean to talk about subjectivity in the language of space, and what are the political implications of doing so? A provocative and illuminating work, Indifferent Boundaries explores the ways that concepts of subjectivity are vitally grounded in metaphors of and assumptions about space. Kathleen Kirby demonstrates how changes that have taken place in real and conceptual space from the Renaissance to the postmodern era have led to a critical rearticulation of the subject by feminist, psychoanalytic, and poststructuralist theorists, among others. Tracing changing ideas about the self--from the stable form of the Enlightenment individual to the postmodern sujet en procès--Kirby appraises both the liberatory possibilities and the everyday cultural implications of the contemporary "space of the subject." This tenacious and substantive investigation of the lexicon of space sheds much needed light in previously dark corners of the poststructuralist edifice, and is certain to appeal to a broad, interdisciplinary audience.