RePresenting Bisexualities: Subjects and Cultures of Fluid Desire

Description

Is bisexuality coming out in America? Bisexual characters are surfacing on popular television shows and in film. Newsweek proclaims that a new sexual identity is emerging. But amidst this burgeoning acknowledgment of bisexuality, is there an understanding of what it means to be bisexual in a monosexual culture? RePresenting Bisexualities seeks to answer these questions, integrating a recognition of bisexual desire with new theories of gender and sexuality. Despite the breakthroughs in gender studies and queer studies of recent years, bisexuality has remained largely unexamined. Problematic sexual images are usually attributed either to homosexual or heterosexual desire while bisexual readings remain unexplored. The essays found in RePresenting Bisexualities discuss fluid sexualities through a variety of readings from the fence, covering texts from Emily Dickinson to Nine Inch Nails. Each author contributes to the collection a unique view of sexual fluidity and transgressive desire. Taken together, these essays provide the most comprehensive bisexual theory reader to date. BI-ntroduction I: Epistemologies of the Fence / Maria Pramaggiore -- BI-ntroduction II: Epistemologies of the Fence / Donald E. Hall -- Ch. 1. Blatantly Bisexual: or, Unthinking Queer Theory / Michael de Plessis -- Ch. 2. Do Bats Eat Cats? Reading What Bisexuality Does / Frann Michel -- Ch. 3. From Performativity to Interpretation: Toward a Social Semiotic Account of Bisexuality / Ki Namaste -- Ch. 4. Graphic Sexuality and the Erasure of a Polymorphous Perversity / Donald E. Hall -- Ch. 5. Loving Dora: Rereading Freud through H.D.'s Her / Lidia Yukman -- Ch. 6. Bi-nary Bi-sexuality: Jane Bowles's Two Serious Ladies / Marcy Jane Knopf -- Ch. 7. Versatile Interests: Reading Bisexuality in The Friendly Young Ladies / Erin G. Carlston -- Ch. 8. Invisible Sissy: The Politics of Masculinity in African American Bisexual Narrative / Traci Carroll -- Ch. 9. Biopia: Bisexuality and the Crisis of Visibility in a Queer Symbolic / Brian Loftus