Celebacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life

252 Pages·2013·1.308 MB·English

by  Benjamin Khan

Celibacies
Duke University Press Durham and London 2013
Celibacies
American Modernism & Sexual Life
benjamin kahan
© 2013 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ∞
Designed by Courtney Baker
Typeset in Whitman by Copperline Book Services, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Kahan, Benjamin.
Celibacies : American modernism and sexual life /
Benjamin Kahan.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8223-5554-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-5568-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Sexual abstinence—Political aspects—United States.
2. Celibacy—Political aspects—United States.
3. Arts—Political aspects—United States—
History—20th century. i. Title.
hq800.15k34 2013
613.9—dc23 2013020977
To Mom and Dad with all my love

Many people have their richest mental/emotional involvement
with sexual acts that they don’t do, or even don’t want to do.
—eve sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet

Acknowledgments xi
Contents introduction
The Expressive Hypothesis 1
1 The Longue Durée of Celibacy: Boston
Marriage, Female Friendship, and the Invention
of Homosexuality 33
2 Celibate Time 56
3 The Other Harlem Renaissance: Father
Divine, Celibate Economics, and the Making of
Black Sexuality 81
4 The Celibate American: Closetedness,
Emigration, and Queer Citizenship before
Stonewall 99
5 Philosophical Bachelorhood, Philosophical
Spinsterhood, and Celibate Modernity 121
conclusion
Asexuality / Neutrality / Relationality 142
Notes 155
Bibliography 199
Index 223