 | Male Sexuality under Surveillance: Office In American Literature Subjects: American fiction -- History and criticism; Offices in literature; Melville Herman 1819–1891. Bartleby the scrivener; Howells William Dean 1837–1920. Rise of Silas Lapham; Lewis Sinclair 1885–1951. Babbitt; Sex (Psychology) in literature; Sex in lit; Male Sexuality under Surveillance is a lively, intelligent, and expertly argued analysis of the construction of male sexuality in the business office. Graham Thompson interweaves three main threads: a historicized cultural analysis of the development of the modern business office from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the present day, a Foucauldian discussion of the office as the site of various disciplinary practices, and a queer-theoretical discussion of the textualization of the gay male body as a device for producing a taxonomy of male-male relations. The combination of these themes produces a study that is fresh, insightful, and provocative. Graham Thompson teaches in the English Department at De Montfort University in Leicester, U.K., and is the author of The Business of America: The Literary and Critical Production of a Post-War Natio. |
