CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Preface – The Human Stain
1 Introduction: Exceptionality
Agamben’s State of Exception
Exceptional SexNovels and Norms, Transgression and Perversion
Textual Exceptionalities
Exceptional Textuality
2 Hymenality – On Chesil Beach
The Heterotopic Hymen
Hymenal Space
Ejaculatory Ejection
Hymenal Time
Historical Time, Exceptional Rupture
3 Incestuous Implications – Gertrude and Claudius
Iterations
Adulterous Parallelism
Abandonment
Re-iterations
The Incestuous Prequel
4 Sexual Sets – The Act of Love
The (Extra)Marital Set
Subset A. (Extra)Marital Exceptions:
A.1 Time and Space
A.2 Subspace
A.3 The Abandonment of (Extra)Marital Law
Subset B. The Narratorial Set:
B.1 Self-Exception
B.2 Storytelling
B.3 The Reader
5 Exceptional Existences – Room
‘Room just is’: Time and Space
“What’s normal?”
Jack and the Wolf
Coda: ‘like in a book’
Notes
Bibliography
Index
"This is one of the most persuasive studies of contemporary fiction published in recent years. Drawing on fresh philosophical and theoretical materials, the book is fascinating and leads us into daring and rigorous explorations of sex, sets, exceptionality, and the contemporary." (Mark Currie, Professor of Contemporary Literature at Queen Mary, University of London, UK) "Davies offers a fresh approach to the study of sex in contemporary fiction. Davies manages that ever so difficult task of combining literary theory with close textual attention. The result is a work that offers new theories of contemporary fiction, its form, and its style."(Sarah Dillon, University Lecturer in Literature and Film, University of Cambridge, UK) "Original and forward-moving, Davies' book provides an analysis of sexual politics in contemporary culture. Through a lucid yet sophisticated reading of Agamben's work, and a wide-range of texts, Davies explores difficult articulations of the thresholds of sexuality and sexual identity, and-surprisingly-arrives at a radical ethical/political theory." (Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, The Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Ben Davies is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He is the co-editor of Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
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