Anne E. Linton, "Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
A compelling study of\xa0medical and literary imaginations, Anne Linton's\xa0Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France\xa0(Cambridge University Press, 2022) examines the complex relationship between\xa0modes of seeing, thinking, and writing intersex bodies and lives.\xa0\nIn\xa0this project, Linton brings a\xa0rich archive of medical cases from 1800 to 1902 into dialogue with canonical nineteenth-century\xa0authors (Honor\xe9 de\xa0Balzac, Th\xe9ophile Gautier, and Emile Zola), as well as\xa0an impressive range of less well-known writers and\xa0popular fictions that captivated French readers during the period. Challenging the (Foucauldian) emphasis on the principle of\xa0a "true sex" that apparently preoccupied French doctors following the Napoleonic Code's regulation of sexual identification (within three days of birth), Linton looks at multiple instances in which the instability of sex,\xa0the uncertainties of bodies and their stories, came up again and again\xa0for medical and other observers. Revisiting the well-known case of Herculine Barbin, Linton situates Barbin's own account within the wider\xa0medical and literary worlds of nineteenth-century France. The book's earlier chapters\xa0lay a historical groundwork for\xa0subsequent\xa0closer readings of fictions\xa0that responded and contributed to a broader cultural fascination with sexual and gender identities, desires, and\xa0ambiguities.\xa0\nWhile historically specific in its research and arguments,\xa0Unmaking Sex\xa0offers\xa0much to readers interested in the past and present\xa0politics of medical, legal, and cultural\xa0debates surrounding intersex people,\xa0with\xa0implications well beyond the French context.\n\ufeffRoxanne Panchasi\xa0is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and empire.\xa0She is the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a channel launched in 2013.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies