In the Realm of the Sexes: The Political Theory of Sex on Screen, 1968-1982

Damon Young
Film and Media
UC Berkeley

Existing studies by film and cultural historians demonstrate how sex experienced a major transformation in the U.S. and West Europe in recent decades. Previously confined to the private sphere, sex found new forms of articulation in public visual culture in the 1960s and 70s, primarily in cinema. But while these accounts offer useful institutional, legislative, and cultural accounts of the new sexualization of the public sphere, there has been insufficient attention paid to the theoretical significance of this development. This dissertation, “In the Realm of the Sexes: The Political Theory of Sex on Screen,” explores how sexual difference, sexual relationality, and the look itself emerge, in post-’60s cinema, as properly political figures that also shape new cinematic languages. Focusing primarily on the U.S. and France—two self-appointed avatars of modern liberal democracy—Young argues that the shift of the location of sex from private to public reveals a number of impasses or paradoxes constitutive of liberalism, and thus of Western political “modernity.”