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djinnofthedamned's review against another edition
3.0
I am no fan of feminist psycho-analysis. In fact, it is one of my least favorite genres of feminist theory. Yet there were aspects of this book I found interesting nonetheless, the overarching attempt to put aging, disability, and queerness in conversation with each other- namely through the temporality of the phallus (as its understood psychoanalytically)
Yet throughout the entire book, I couldn't help but think "whose phallus?" and to that end, whose conception of sexuality, disability, and even queerness inform this work. On some level, I find it hard to imagine that hypersexuality (vis a vie Black feminist thought) and coloniality of sexuality and gender (Lugones, Hazel Carby) factor nowhere into a book about sexuality, aging, and disability. I'm even surprised that for the mention of butch-femme disability and aging, an analysis of temporality +aging and the lesbian sexual revolution is notoriously absent. I even think the comparative literary analysis would have been more interesting had the author elected to displace her reading of Roth and Lawrence for LGBTQ authors such as Cheryl Clarke, Kate Bornstein, Audre Lorde's cancer journals, etc- queer people who have talked about the impact of aging on their relationship to sex, disability, and the temporal phallus.
So, while I think this book made the point that it set out to make, it operates within an exceptionally small theoretical frame for a work published in the 21st century. I think it could have done more than it did, availing itself of a wider breath of textual interlocutors and cultural referents.
Yet throughout the entire book, I couldn't help but think "whose phallus?" and to that end, whose conception of sexuality, disability, and even queerness inform this work. On some level, I find it hard to imagine that hypersexuality (vis a vie Black feminist thought) and coloniality of sexuality and gender (Lugones, Hazel Carby) factor nowhere into a book about sexuality, aging, and disability. I'm even surprised that for the mention of butch-femme disability and aging, an analysis of temporality +aging and the lesbian sexual revolution is notoriously absent. I even think the comparative literary analysis would have been more interesting had the author elected to displace her reading of Roth and Lawrence for LGBTQ authors such as Cheryl Clarke, Kate Bornstein, Audre Lorde's cancer journals, etc- queer people who have talked about the impact of aging on their relationship to sex, disability, and the temporal phallus.
So, while I think this book made the point that it set out to make, it operates within an exceptionally small theoretical frame for a work published in the 21st century. I think it could have done more than it did, availing itself of a wider breath of textual interlocutors and cultural referents.
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