Sita Balani, "Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race" (Verso, 2023)
New Books in Critical Theory
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The Evolution of Sexual Modernity
Sexual modernity is a move away from medieval understandings of the body as an element of a wider divine order. The idea that it's sex, sexual difference, sexual, the sex body that is the foundation for determining who should be in what category to me seemed more important than it had been given credit for. So I found it kind of fascinating that the Linnaeus system of taxonomy, which is the one we still use today, basically. categorised plants by their sexual characteristics and humans are also being categorized by sexual difference.
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