Description

Representing Kink raises awareness about non-normative texts and non-normative erotic practices and desires. It defines “kink” broadly, encompassing a range of “inappropriate” texts and understanding it in frequent reference to non-normative erotic fantasies and experiences. Kink is treated as both a set of practices as well as a category of texts at the nexus of subject and form. In addition to canonical texts that take up erotic and marginalized themes, the collection also studies forms that are themselves fringe and feature kink: taboo literature, self-published erotica, SM narratives, fan fiction, role-playing games, and other disavowed texts. The purpose of this study is to focus attention on the margins of an already marginalized subject, in order to highlight the extent to which non-normative textuality and eroticism both shape and are shaped by culture and context. It sheds light on a category of subjects that is at once mainstream in the form of texts such as Fifty Shades of Grey and yet nevertheless repeatedly disparaged and undertheorized. This book advocates for conversations about kinky texts that transcend dichotomous frameworks of good and bad, and normal and deviant--thinking instead in new, theoretically rigorous and flexible directions.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Entering the Fringe

Sara K. Howe and Susan E. Cook

1. Playing Rough: Consent, Captivity, and Rape Role Play in Taboo Erotic Romances

Sara K. Howe

2. Violating the Vampire: Twihard Fan Fiction as Rape Fantasy

Jane M. Kubiesa

3. A Kink of One’s Own: Subversion, Disorientation, and the Feminine Voice in Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School

Fe Lorraine Reyes

4. Queer Beginnings: From Fanzines to Rule 34

Brian Watson and Bobby Derie

5. It’s a (Bound and Gagged) Living: Sweet Gwendoline and the “Danger Girl” Archetype

Sean Shannon

6. Kinking the Canon: Pornography and Prose in Fingersmith and The Handmaiden

Susan E. Cook

7. “To Test the Limits and Break Through”: How Femslash Rejects Straight-Coding of Queer Experiences in Disney’s Frozen

Whitney S. May

8. Breaking the Scales: Refusal, Excess, and the Fat Male Body in Supernatural and Harry Potter Fan Fiction

Jonathan A. Rose

9. “Roll for Seduction”: Sex as Forbidden Play in Critical Role and The Adventure Zone Fan Fiction

Josh Zimmerman and Antonnet Johnson



About the Editors

About the Contributors

Index

Product details

Published Sep 06 2019
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 194
ISBN 9781498590853
Imprint Lexington Books
Dimensions 236 x 161 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Sara K. Howe

Anthology Editor

Susan E. Cook

Contributor

Bobby Derie

Contributor

Jane M. Kubiesa

Contributor

Whitney S. May

Whitney S. May is an Associate Professor of Instru…

Contributor

Sean Shannon

Contributor

Brian Watson

Contributor

Josh Zimmerman

ONLINE RESOURCES

Bloomsbury Collections

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