Circumcision on the Couch: The Cultural, Psychological, and Gendered Dimensions

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This book examines how one thing that some people do to penises-remove the foreskin-has become a site upon which vital questions of gender, race, religion, sexuality, and psychic life are negotiated.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

An Independent Book of the MonthPenises, and the things people do with them, have been subjects of controversy for a long time. This book examines how one thing that some people do to penises—remove the foreskin—has become a site upon which vital questions of gender, race, religion, sexuality, and psychic life are negotiated. While most contemporary work on the subject is concerned with whether circumcision is right or wrong, safe or harmful, Circumcision on the Couch takes as its starting point that the significance of male circumcision exceeds anatomical and juridical considerations.Deploying a feminist Lacanian framework, while drawing from a wide range of archival sources and critical thought, Jordan Osserman asks: How can psychoanalysis help us shed light on the ideologies, discourses, and fantasies surrounding circumcision and the impassioned stances for and against it? And how might the history of circumcision, in turn, allow us to re-assess and clarify how we understand the split (or "snipped") subject of psychoanalysis?

Author Biography

Jordan Osserman is Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck (University of London), UK, and a clinical trainee with the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, London.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Snipped Subject1. Freud's Foreskin: Psychoanalytic Interpretations and Applications of the Penile Cut2. 'Real Circumcision is a Matter of the Heart': On Badiou's St. Paul and Boyarin's Jewish Question3. The 'Talking Cure' versus the 'Circumcision Cure': On the 19th-Century Medicalization of Circumcision4. Is the Phallus Uncut? Circumcision and Intactivism TodayConclusion: 'The Damn Thing Never Goes Unregistered'

Review

Thorough and historically wide-ranging. * The Cambridge Quarterly *During a time when men, especially white men, are a category put into serious question, let us take the unlikely route of the 'foreskin' question, towards all that psychoanalysis has to say about the penis and cutting it, or not. Osserman's book takes us through this murky ground in ways serious, and seriously funny, towards what we might call a 'circumcision of the heart,' where we know ourselves as simply human, and not a god with and among men. * Jamieson Webster, author of Conversion Disorder and The Hamlet Doctrine *Jordan Osserman's Circumcision on the Couch: The Cultural, Psychological, and Gendered Dimensions of the World's Oldest Surgery provides the critical reader with a critical analysis of the role that infant male circumcision played (and plays) in Western theories of the social sciences and the humanities over the past one hundred plus years. Rooted in the examination of psychoanalytic debates about the practice and its implication for the participants in the debates, this insightful and productive approach shows how these theories evolve, reproduce, and refashion themselves in worlds where notions of masculinity, bodily integrity, gender, and race/ethnicity are seemingly transitional categories. Well worth the read! * Sander L. Gilman, author of Stand Up Straight! A History of Posture *Jordan Osserman's Circumcision on the Couch is the first, expansive psychoanalytic analysis of a medical procedure that carries enormous historical and culture weight, as well as the ability to ignite passionate debate. The brilliance of the book is not only its lucid and succinct survey of centuries of theological, medical, cultural, and political controversies over circumcision but its presentation of these arguments – and the enormous tensions among them – with nuance, sensitivity, and compassion. * Michael Bronski, Professor of the Practice in Activism and Media, Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Harvard University, USA, and author of A Queer History of the United States *

Promotional

This volume places psychoanalysis in dialogue with the history of male circumcision and socio-cultural stances towards its practice.

Review Quote

"During a time when men, especially white men, are a category put into serious question, let us take the unlikely route of the 'foreskin' question, towards all that psychoanalysis has to say about the penis and cutting it, or not. Osserman's book takes us through this murky ground in ways serious, and seriously funny, towards what we might call a 'circumcision of the heart,' where we know ourselves as simply human, and not a god with and among men." -- Jamieson Webster, author of Conversion Disorder and The Hamlet Doctrine "Jordan Osserman's Circumcision on the Couch: The Cultural, Psychological, and Gendered Dimensions of the World's Oldest Surgery provides the critical reader with a critical analysis of the role that infant male circumcision played (and plays) in Western theories of the social sciences and the humanities over the past one hundred plus years. Rooted in the examination of psychoanalytic debates about the practice and its implication for the participants in the debates, this insightful and productive approach shows how these theories evolve, reproduce, and refashion themselves in worlds where notions of masculinity, bodily integrity, gender, and race/ethnicity are seemingly transitional categories. Well worth the read!" -- Sander L. Gilman, author of Stand Up Straight! A History of Posture "Jordan Osserman's Circumcision on the Couch is the first, expansive psychoanalytic analysis of a medical procedure that carries enormous historical and culture weight, as well as the ability to ignite passionate debate. The brilliance of the book is not only its lucid and succinct survey of centuries of theological, medical, cultural, and political controversies over circumcision but its presentation of these arguments - and the enormous tensions among them - with nuance, sensitivity, and compassion." -- Michael Bronski, Professor of the Practice in Activism and Media, Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Harvard University, USA, and author of A Queer History of the United States

Promotional "Headline"

This volume places psychoanalysis in dialogue with the history of male circumcision and socio-cultural stances towards its practice.

Feature

A scholarly, critical analysis of the cultural, psychological, and gendered significance of circumcision, standing in sharp contrast to the polemical, and often anti-feminist, publications of 'intactivists'

Details ISBN1501386387 Short Title Circumcision on the Couch Pages 264 Series Psychoanalytic Horizons Language English Year 2023 ISBN-10 1501386387 ISBN-13 9781501386381 Format Paperback Publication Date 2023-07-27 Subtitle The Cultural, Psychological, and Gendered Dimensions of the World's Oldest Surgery DEWEY 392.1 UK Release Date 2023-07-27 Author Dr. Jordan Osserman Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Imprint Bloomsbury Academic USA Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States NZ Release Date 2023-07-27 US Release Date 2023-07-27 Audience Tertiary & Higher Education AU Release Date 2023-07-26 We've got this

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