Synopses & Reviews
"Literature and the Relational Self is a tribute to the rich complexity of human natureas poets, novelists, and relational models of contemporary psychoanalysis mutually attest."
Psychoanalytic Psychologist
While psychoanalytic relational perspectives have had a major impact on the clinical world, their value for the field of literary study has yet to be fully recognized. This important book offers a broad overview of relational concepts and theories, and it examines their implications for understanding literary and aesthetic experience as it reviews feminist applications of relational-model theories, and considers D. W. Winnicott's influential ideas about creativity and symbolic play.
The eight incisive essays in this volume apply these concepts to a close reading of various nineteenth and twentieth-century literary texts: an essay on Wordsworth, for instance, explores the poet's writing on the imagination in light of Winnicott's ideas about transitional phenomena, while an essay on Woolf and Lawrence compares identity issues in their work from the perspective of feminist object relations theories.
The cultural influences that have led to the development of the relational paradigm in the sciences at this particular historical moment have also affected contemporary art and literature. Essays on John Updike, Toni Morrison, Ann Beattie, and Alice Hoffman examine self-other relational dynamics in their texts that reflect larger cultural patterns characteristic of our time. The author reviews feminist applications of relational-model theories and applies these models to works by William Wordsworth, Virginia Woolf, John Updike, Toni Morrison, and others.
Review
&8220;In this path-breaking book, which is startling for what it reveals and what it innovates, Cantú shows how sex and the state are intimately related in one of the greatest dramas of our time, international migration. The Sexuality of Migration is a work of inspiration, integrity, and scholarly creativity.”
-Perrette Hondagneu-Sotelo,author of God's Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights
Synopsis
Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association, Sociology of Sexualities Section Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award in Latino Studies Honorable Mention from the Latin American Studies Association
The Sexuality of Migration provides an innovative study of the experiences of Mexican men who have same sex with men and who have migrated to the United States.
Until recently, immigration scholars have left out the experiences of gays and lesbians. In fact, the topic of sexuality has only recently been addressed in the literature on immigration. The Sexuality of Migration makes significant connections among sexuality, state institutions, and global economic relations. Cantú; situates his analysis within the history of Mexican immigration and offers a broad understanding of diverse migratory experiences ranging from recent gay asylum seekers to an assessment of gay tourism in Mexico. Cantú uses a variety of methods including archival research, interviews, and ethnographic research to explore the range of experiences of Mexican men who have sex with men and the political economy of sexuality and immigration. His primary research site is the greater Los Angeles area, where he interviewed many immigrant men and participated in organizations and community activities alongside his informants.
Sure to fill gaps in the field, The Sexuality of Migration simultaneously complicates a fixed notion of sexual identity and explores the complex factors that influence immigration and migration experiences.
About the Author
Lionel Cantú, Jr. (1965-2002), was an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Department of Sociology.
Nancy A. Naples is Professor of Women's Studies and Sociology at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of many books, including Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research and Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothering, Community Work, and the War on Poverty.
Salvador Vidal-Ortiz is Assistant Professor of Sociology at American University. His work has appeared in journals such as Qualitative Sociology, Sociology Compass, and Sexualities, and books such as Gay Religion and Latinos/as in the United States: Changing the Face of América.